Fearless cruising

I never really sailed much in WW boats. Wild Wind that is. When I finally realized I should, they were sorta gone. Taking a break from SL. Luckily Wild Wind is now back in the game and has been for a while.

Greener pastures

One day I was hanging out at SL, when Fearless moored his WW OP60. I hopped into my favourite sailor-dress and rushed over to ask for a ride. Fearless said yes, so I jumped onboard and we took of.

Heading south

Now that I look at the pictures I remember thinking: Why is it so green. In fact it's supergreen. Yes Sir! The sailing experience was super-green. The boat moves with a distinct lightness, and there's loads of details everywhere: Paired rudders, daggerboards, deck spreaders, rope bags and more.

Deck spreaders

Here's more nice details. The deck spreaders has support ropes. Dunno the english terms for the lines running over the deck spreaders, so please: Someone write it in a comment. It's not that I like those rather weird extra poles for supporting the mast, but they're made to look like the real thing, and that they do very well.

Sailing

Here's another shot of the deck spreaders. Strangely, while the deck spreaders are in place and supported by ropes, there are no sheets on the boat. I always found it a bit weird having no sheets. It sorta breaks the bubble for me.

Waking up

The wake is different. There's no triangular wake, - only the foam right behind the boat. This is actually a nice touch, because that's where the foam goes if anywhere at all. Those triangular foamy wakes seen so often in SL - they should really be just a wave moving away from the boat.

Canting keel

Trimming seems a bit on the easy side as there's no adjusting the sailshape. However, there's a canting keel to play with. It can be on auto, but it's way more fun to use the manual override. Otherwise the boat is simply too automatic for my taste. The rudder and the daggerboards seem to have their own will.

Cruising in an Open 60

But that's just me. If I wanna go cruising, I'd take my T-One or my good old Bolero. If I go out in a racer like the Open 60, I'd deffo want to work with it. Not just sit and tan while going 18 knots downhill.

No sheets anywhere

Wild Wind chose to default to the ever rotating SL wind. i only tried that in a few other boats. This Laser for instance. SL wind is nowhere near any kind of normal wind, so why bother building that into a boat? Luckily there are other options. You can lock the wind to a specific setting, but who'd wanna do that? Instead the WWC cruising wind is probably the best option; Provided you want a slightly realistic wind.

It's a cruiser in disguise

So overall it's a very nice build with loads of good details, but crucial details such as sheets are missing. The sail-engine works flawlessly, and it crosses sim borders very nicely. Still, to me the boat flies a little too easy and with too few trimming options. I'd consider it a cruiser in disguise, and a really nice one too. Much like many other boats in SL.