Custom Sails

I have been doing personalized custom sails for the Flying Tako boats since April 2006. And I got into this sailmaking thing sort of by an accident. I had been thinking that I would like to create something here in SL – but I didn’t have a clue what I should do. I did have some (not so good) ideas, but mostly when I explored and searched around a little, I found out that someone had done them already way better than I could, or then my ideas were just dull or not so suitable for SL.

So at about this time, early spring 2006, I found about sailing in SL – and the Flying Tako of course. I did read on the forum about this boat that could use wind in SL to move around, and very soon after that I had bought my very own boat. It didn’t take me long time to learn that I could put my own textures on the sails and also on the boat hull. And I wanted to make my boat unique. So after lots and lots of hours of trial and error and learning about textures, and about 50 uploads or so I had my first set of sails ready for the “Mermaid”.

It took lots more effort to create the hull textures and wrap them all around the boat. But eventually I did get it together – and the boat was ready to be entered in the Vagabonds Yacht Club boat show.

Soon after the show, I started getting requests from other sailors, if I would be interested making custom sails for them too. First only to few, then to couple more … and soon I found myself selling sails in Second Life. I did not ever think of becoming a sailmaker, but there I was anyways. 🙂

Since that time I have created many different kinds of personalized custom sails … from vague themes to very specified requests with photos or artwork attached. I will attach couple pictures to the end of this post of most recent work, these are displayed at Caddo at the moment too, the boats might stay for a while – so feel free to visit there to see them.

I do take custom orders, and completing the orders depends a bit on how busy I am. The set of custom sails for a Flying Tako includes a mainsail and spinnaker, and also a custom colored and shaded boat hull that is done in photoshop, with a boat name – and possibly accent stripes too. And every order is exclusive of course, so even though I have had several requests over time asking if I will sell certain sail design – that I have had on display at my shop – I do not sell the personalized custom orders except only to the person who originally ordered the item.

If you are interested in unique custom sails, feel free to send IM to me in SL, and stop by at SZ Designs Sail Loft at Caddo too to see some of the designs that I have made.

There might be exciting new development regarding custom sails in the near future, so I will post here about them as soon as they get done.

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Pearl

This was a project that took some time to get finished, with some unexpected things happening and then arranging the boat to be sold from a vendor (it is still a Tako, so Kanker owns the vendor) … and in the very end Kanker also updated the Tako to version 3.3 – so Pearl was to be a version 3.3 Flying Tako too.

So … what is it then? And why is it called “Pearl”?

The name came last, just before creating the vendor graphics, so I will explain it first. I had the idea that since the boat essentially is a Flying Tako, with only cosmetic changes… And tako is octopus in japanese (you can see that on the original Tako sail logo too), I did want this boat to be in some way tied to an octopus of some kind, or at least some kind of sealife if not octopus.

So I thought and thought some more, it is always the most difficult part to come up with a name it seems. And there weren’t that many octopi with very appealing names, it appeared to me. So I spent some more time thinking, and tried to search the web for various squid. And the more I searched the less appealing the whole idea seemed. And then finally when I was about to give up, from somewhere came the idea..

There is a very cute purple octopus called Pearl in Disney film “Finding Nemo” and from that moment on when I thought of that, “Pearl” seemed very appropriate name for a boat that is customized from a Flying Tako. 🙂

So .. about the boat itself then. It was inspired by vintage square metre class boats, with traditional materials .. and I chose pine, oregon pine and teak for this boat. This boat evolved somewhat from a custom project I did last year, someone might remember seeing the mahogany boat called “Christelle” in front of the Sail Loft in Caddo.

However this pine boat, as I used to call it for quite long time, soon evolved to have a life of it’s own – with tanbark sails and painted dark red under the waterline with white accent stripes – very much honoring the traditional aesthetics of similar vintage boats in RL. Also some finer details got improved on “Pearl” such as the vintage lines going up the mast and along the deck of the boat.

In essence it is a Flying Tako, the prim shapes and sizes are left intact. But every single texture on the boat has been changed from the originals. So it can be said to be a fully custom textured Tako … all textures have also been crafted to specifically fit this particular boat.

So along the project, the boat was displayed for a time at my shop, but not yet for sale … and I got several people asking when it would be available. So I am glad to announce now, that it finally got finished a few weeks ago, with Tako version 3.3 scripts in it, put into a vendor, and is for sale now.

You can see and buy the boat in-world at SZ Designs Sail Loft, Caddo. 🙂

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