Flying Catfish

A few weeks back I was at NYC. Don't really remember why, but it's a beautiful place. Reason enough I guess. Anyway, I walked around a bit, and in the shop I saw yet another cat for sale. It was positioned like todays bargain, right in my face, and since there was a test version, I took it for a spin.

The Flying Catfish 33

So here it is. Doesn't look too bad, right? The sign didn't say anything about the age, but once rezzed it was pretty obvious that this old cat was in bad need of a makeover. It's from 2007 or so. In SL a couple of years is a long time. Look again and note the strange keels on the hulls. Also there is a pretty weird finn between the keel and the rudder blade.

Details

There's a lot of good details though; Check the image above. Lines, winches and furling genoa. The mast however, it appears to be a little too massive for a cat. It's more like a mast from a 30 foot keeler buildt in the sixties or sum ding. All in all it looked a little too heavy for me to handle, so I called Orca. Luckily she was glad to help out.

It sails

So we took off. Sailed around the Blake Sea for a few minutes. Mostly in silence. Then we looked at each other with disbelief. Really not worth sailing. I mean, it sails. It's trimmable, there's a wake, there's a genn and that's about it. There's flat sails, no sounds, no waves and current. Not very exciting compared to the Hepcat and the Nacra17

To the untrained eye

So the sailing isn't really up to date. The looks aren't either. This is one of those elderly boats that look great, provided you look at it from just the right angles, but when you change the angle only a little bit, weird details pop up. On top of that the positions in which we can sit are... Let's just say some of them look kinda unnatural.

Orcs takes pics

There's also the usual suspects: No compass, no windvane, no telltales. Not that they are present on  those modern cats. Conclusion? Don't spend you money and time on this one. It's a experience of a lifetime, but it's a bad one. Not worth repeating. While this boat might have been good in it's day, it's really a mystery why NYC choose to still place it as a premium product in the shop.

Here's Orcas' few notes on the experience...