Renowned American naval architect Nathaniel Green Herreshoff designed and built the world’s finest yachts, including 6 consecutive America’s Cup champions, from the mid 19th to the early 20th centuries. Despite the attention those magnificent boats have received and rightly so, probably his most beloved, popular and enduring design is his 12 1/2.

Known variously as Bull’s Eye, Buzzard’s Bay 12 1/2 Footer, Buzzards Bay Boy Boat, Doughdish, H 12 - the daysailer drawn up nearly 100 years ago is still built today. Despite her compact size (the name comes from her waterline length) and origins (as a training boat for the children of yachtsmen!), the 12 1/2 can carry 4-6 adults. The little yacht feel has helped ensure her popularity to this day.

This is the boat that inspired the latest from Trudeau - we’ve taken Cap’n Nat’s design, upscaled her to 20 ft LWL to carry 4 avatars and christened her the Trudeau Twenty.

We’ve also gone back to our roots as this is our first “rideable” (non-attaching) model in a while - but one with a sculptie twist. The graceful full-keeled hull and sweeping coamings as well as the cockpit and decks are constructed from a single sculptie prim. That leaves plenty of room for the nautical detailing we like to put into the Trudeau boats - without having to use a high primcount attachment. Come see her at Trudeau Classic Sailing Yachts and see if you don’t agree!

Philosophy

There are plenty of wonderful sailboats to choose from in SL, but one thing to realize is that they are nearly all modeled on high performance sailing dinghies. They sail fast, they plane, they point high, throwing more wind at them makes them zip along even faster while heeling at 45 degrees or more. A boat like the Herreshoff 12 1/2 - with her full deep keel and gaff rig - just doesn’t behave like that. However she’s a lively sailer and we’ve attempted to make the Twenty’s SL sailing characteristics in line with her RL inspiration. You may find her overall speed potential, her capability on various points of sail, her behavior when facing higher winds somewhat different than what you are used to with other SL sailing boats. However we think they perfectly match her looks and pedigree as a “classic” full keeled sailing yacht.

Customization

“There are only two colors to paint a boat, black and white, and only a damn fool would paint it black.”

-NG Herreshoff

OK, so the great designer was a little strong of opinion. ;) That doesn’t mean we have to follow his every commandment. As with all Trudeau boats, there is a built-in selection of traditional nautical color schemes, including Cap’n Nat’s favorite. But we are also publishing Photoshop PSD templates for the hull and rudder (3.0MB),  transom naming (137KB)  and sail (9.41MB) graphics. Download them, customize them, apply them to your Twenty and make her truly your own! (see this page for step-by-step naming instructions - Twenty follows the Sea Sharp procedure).

Other Features of the Trudeau Twenty include:

• Can be sailed either solo or in collaboration with a crew (up to 4 total riders including skipper). You can assign skipper permissions to others as well.
• Realistic sailing including functional reefing when encountering overpowering winds and - introduced for the first time in the Trudeau fleet - boat to boat windshadowing.
• Moving tiller, rudder and helmsperson animations. Hard a-lee is really hard a-lee on the Twenty :)
• 2 HUDs provide button control for the common boat handling commands and display of environmental conditions. The full featured HUD allows individual control over each sail, allowing the seasoned skipper access to such sailing concepts as wing and wing, jib backfill, etc. For the novice or lazy (horrors!) skipper, the EZ-Sail HUD controls all sails with a single click!
• For overriding the fluky SL winds, artificial wind strength and direction commands which are translated into apparent wind. SLSF windsetter compatibility prompts you for acceptance of racewind.
• Masthead pennant functions as apparent wind taletell.
• Auxiliary motor to power you through those rare occasions when the wind dies down.
• Accomodations for your crew in sit animations positioned about the cockpit.
• Since sim crossings can be unpredictable, copy and modify permissions.
• Extra goodies - autorezzing drydock cradle when rezzed inworld over land. Mooring buoy and line rezzes on forward deck cleat touch.  Rezzing boom tent, lantern and sleeping poses. Half-hull model for display in your SL home.

Dimensions:
Trudeau Twenty - 27 prims, 20 ft (6.1m) LWL, 26.6ft (6.9m) LOA, 8.7ft (2.65m) beam, 3.7ft (1.15m) draft