Navigating the Southern Seas
by Pacifien Massiel
An ordinary evening out on the waters of Sanchon, your trusty cameraman was on the scene to capture a moment in time. A moment that could tell the grid that we, the sailors of Second Life, look damn cool.
But my intentions fell victim to the perils of the waters found around the southern continent. There I was, hanging off the side of the all natural Skippy Spatula’s Flying Tako, waiting to take a prime shot as the fleet rounded the windward buoy. The boat suddenly gave a dangerous lurch toward the water, as if thrown by a massive wave to the side.
I heard a distant cry. It was all I could do to hold my place, to shift my balance over to the starboard side of the boat and keep the whole thing from capsizing. It took me a second to realize what had sent the entire boat leaning.
Nooooooo! Skippy! Where had my skipper gone?! I, the simple passenger, was alone in the boat! Passengers couldn’t control the Flying Tako, it only listened to one master! And that person was suddenly gone!
After the initial shock, the boat settled into a drift. On I drifted, right into the moored boat of James Newcomb by the reaching mark. I thought that was the end of my day, lost adrift until I could find some kind soul to tow me ashore.
That’s when I noticed something a bit… odd. Did the spinnaker just move? Did the mainsail? When I thought myself drifting aimlessly, the boat had shift slightly starboard of the reaching mark and then, suddenly, onward to the leeward mark. It was slow. It was clumsy. But it was moving in the proper direction.
I kept hearing that faint voice. It sounded so much like Skippy, her voice lost and confused in some unknown void. No, it couldn’t be. Once the seas took you, you were doomed. There was no coming back without a hard reboot on your Second Life. You didn’t fall out of the boat with such force and remain in this world. It lacked all good sense!
But her voice I heard. And those sails continued to move ever so slightly. It was like she was calling from her watery grave, willing the boat to finish the race without her.
“Skippy!” I called. “I can hear you! You must humor me!”
I could sense the confusion, but the spirit calmed. She was listening.
“Trim you sails,” I told her. “Move your boat to the left.”
I held my breath for that moment. I focused all my thought to Skippy’s spirit, knowing that she had to be out there and her boat was still waiting for her command. Then… the boat moved to the left! The sails were pulled in! We were turning around the leeward mark!
No wait! We were still turning left! Argh! We were going to go in circles!
“Stop! Stop going left! Go right! Argh! Stop! Don’t do anything!”
Apparently, one’s navigation commands could only take a skipper so far when that skipper was lost in a void world with no way of seeing what her boat was doing. I thought it best to play it safe. I guided her only as far as she needed to get the boat pointed toward the finish line.
Exhausted, I slumped back in the boat and let the slow drift take us home. We had done it, Skippy and I. We kept the bonds alive to help guide her boat to shore without its skipper at the helm.
At eight minutes on a normally two minute course, Skippy Spatula’s boat had officially finished the race. Then it crashed into the shore and shattered into hundreds of pieces of flotsam.
Skippy and her boat were reborn to continue sailing that night, never to let the seas defeat them. Sail on, fair Skippy. Sail on.