Best Watercraft for touring...

I've been reading about the wonders of touring the waterways of SL. So far I've been doing most of my touring by air with a Hot Air Balloon. I love the balloon because it's slow enough to be able to see things, and responds well to lag situations. What water vehicles do people recommend?

Also, I'm curious. One of the problems I have touring the roadways, is finding places I can rez a car to take off. Anyone have any secrets about finding good places with road/water access for rezzing?

I personally have never found watercraft that I have liked more than Taylor Portocarrero's boats, which are sold in some of her Luscious stores (how boats and lingerie go together, I don't know, but it works). They are very easy to handle, hold multiple people, and handle border crossings effectively. The same is also true of Francis Chung's jet ski - I am not sure if it is still available for sale, however. It is called the Frantastic Turbo Jetski or something like that - it only holds two, but is a very fun way to travel on the seas. I am sure there are many other great watercraft - I have just never found need for much else in the way of water vehicles since I own those two.

The Frantastic is definitly available, I was just looking at it. It's definitly on my list of potential one. I'll look at luscious' boats first.

Now if I could just get from islands to the mainland without having to teleport.

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Seats 4 and 5 people respectively, fine throttle setting, guest driver, et cetra.

You can rez a boat right on the water in the seaside village in Cowell. There are plenty of docks and public beaches from which you can embark there. Also the neighboring Forest of Kahruvel to the north and northwest of Cowell, in Stinson and Rodeo, has plenty of public beaches to rez a boat at. Stinson is next to the Rosedale water region and Rodeo is on the western edge of the large inland sea where the large handprint formation lies beneath the waters of Omidyar.

Seriously the best way to tour the waterways of SL is via innertube, especially ones that do a bumper car bounce when your friends ram into you. Oodles of fun and very relaxing.

(Shameless self-promotion)
The VTA on www.slexchange.com
It's a thrust based acceloration in fly/hover modes. We built it just for exploration so we made it easy to control. It switches modes from flying to boat when you land on water.
The drifting you may like for sight seeing.
Most of it is automated except 2 commands that stop the ship in mid air from drifting. And one that deploys a waypoint.
I built the waypoint/scanners into the ship in order to help out in making a path for a group to follow. Works good for showing newbies around as they tend to get lost easy.
Thats what we use for group exploration anyway.
Handles boarder crossing pretty well. Probably because it drifts.

Try one of my paddle boats. Holds two, fully animated and with sound. It moves nice and slow giving things time to rez. Back in 1.5 i went for a 3 hour tour in one covering over 50 sims.

I sell them for 150 (I think), or just IM me and i'll pass you one.

caution, you'll get your pants wet!

I like to sail as much as possible in my Flying Tako. I enjoy narrow waterways more than open void sims as there's a greater feeling of movement seeing the land pass by. Besides, part of why I do it is to see what's going on in the sims. I highly recommend the Flying Tako.

I love my Flying Tako.

-Ghoti

Where can I find a Flying Tako?
I didn't see any on slexchange.

i just took a trip around onna big ol Pontoon Boat by bobalia Best
and had a ball!

i have always wanted a pontoon boat!!!

Kanker Greenacre has a dock in Gray by the Kazenojin tower, and the Takos are all there (several varieties) for 1L. Also there -- a kiosk for the SLSF.

Dang these things are nicly scripted.
How can anyone sell a thing with the best stuff being only L$1

If you want to build your own boat, the Flying Tako scripts (with the exception of the code for racing) are in the scripting library on the LSL wiki. Hooray for open source!

They're quite realistic for racing, but they don't feel like you're puttering around in a boat when you're just puttering around in a boat. For example, when you go aground or turn into the wind they seem to start acting more like a little motorboat than a sailboat in irons. I guess it's a shortcoming of the Havok vehicle code.

I bought one of these boats, and I agree, it's a great boat. My only complaint is that it's sold xfer/no-copy. For a vehicle, I really like to have copy as I have lost more than one in sim crossings. Other than that, it's a very sweet ride!