Hoist the Mainsail and head for the high seas

A few people here have been saying USS are non commercial and don't make money.......ROFLMAO go take a look at the New England area or Sailors Cove........land is rented there in a big way.......and at prices which to a large extent are higher than land rentals anywhere else !!!!!........why do you you think they rent land.......hmm just for the fun of it.....I don't think so

Through this move LL has increased value and given an added advantage for these estates........and thats favouritism..........bottom line.

I have no problem with that at all..............i say good for USS they got the luck of the draw........however for Jack and LL to say this is not favouritism..........get real !!!!

Oh and Toxic asked who else out there could run sailing sims better and therefore be eligable for free sim usage in a deal like this............hmm let me think.......how many shall i mention......well seen as Garth Fairchang has posted on this thread..........and has open water for public use.....which i have used..........and its all very well run........I'd say theres one candidate

I think all that gets peoples backs up is the fact LL just can't be honest about anything.......take note LL......it's not a problem to make desicisions like this but be honest about the reasons and don't feed residents preverbial B...S...

OH and

Merry Christmas Everyone

If you going to go sailing on the Blake Sea in your newbie dinghy then you maybe need be careful. Apparently USS going to get use of the banhammer over parts of it at times even though is Linden Land. Mr Prokofy Neva really upset about that after having chat with Mr Jack Linden who just say is something that LL have to give to USS to enable them to run regattas on Blake Sea. Conversation is on Mr Nevas blog.

Maybe Mr Linden change his mind about this. Hope so anyways. Is one thing to move sims around to make a better experience for the public, but is a bit chilling I think to hear that other ordinary residents maybe be able to wield banhammer on public spaces. Land they dont own or pay for.

Is true that nawti people sometimes grief yatch races, but what about little person just sailing along in their dinghy who doesnt even know is a race on. Are they going to get banhammered or frozen and evicted just because the Race Marshal who is just ordinary resident says so ??? Or is the Blake Sea going to be closed to the public while race is on ??? Or is Linden Lab going to appoint one of their own employees to marshall a race organised by USS ??? And if so then can any other sailing group organise their regattas on Blake Sea and have a Linden marshall their races ??? Or if not a Linden then will they get banhammer privileges as well ??? or is this only for USS ???

Is lots murky stuff here, that maybe not been thought about already by Linden Lab. I hope can all be sorted out soon, because is going to be lots of problems if its not.

Is not a good idea really at all. I think be best if USS just keep their regattas to within their own sims. Maybe they decide to do this already. Hope so. Be best for everyone I think. And the public can come in their boats and watch race from the Blake Sea sims and sail along the edges of USS sims while race in progress. That way the public not get in the way of the racing yatches but can also sail around themselves.

And then is no need for any Linden to be personally involved at all. Or any need for any resident to have use of public space banhammer on a regular basis. This is quite spooky really. It maybe ok. It maybe not. Depends on which end of the banhammer you on really. Would be a major turning point in direction of SL though if was allowed to happen. Because would be a permanant kind of thing. Even if in this case is only a part time thing.

When other projects that LL wants to do with other inworld groups get running then what ??? Maybe they get to use banhammer as well. Maybe Infohubs operators then get banhammer. Maybe give to Senior Mentors as well to use with discretion at Help and Welcome Areas. Is kinda slippery slope once it gets started. I dont think is worth it really no matter how beautiful or pleasurable a yatch race can be sometimes.

So ya I think maybe be best to not even think about it and USS race only on their own sims. And if they want to run bluewater races on the high seas then is ok if they do but just like in RL bluewater racing is no guarantee of anything.

In the only meeting I attended with Jack he specifically told the USS that they did not have the power to ban anybody in Blake Sea as it is public land open to every citizen in SL. The USS still may ban anyone they deem necessary from their own privately held sims but anyone so banned will still have access to the Blake Sea. The Blake Sea is LL land and they are not giving up control of it to anyone or any group. It is there for all in SL to explore and enjoy.

Jack, I think we need an answer about that: what powers will USS residents have over Linden-owned sims associated with the Blake Sea endeavor?

I really don't know whether they should have Freeze/Eject or even Ban. Possibly. But if they do, residents are sure going to need to know about it, and about the conditions and personae under which they can exercise those powers. If, for example, Linden sims are going to be part of scheduled events--"regattas", say--that exclude all but a USS-managed attendance, that's quite different from some few USS individuals being G-Team deputized with a minimal Linden-named account to remove griefers.

Getting back to topic of this thread (as usual you all forgot the topic a long time ago).....

What about other forms of boating? When are we going to see planned hydroplane races? I've never heard a peep about any coordinated races anywhere in-world for this type of boat, even being a good friend of the owner of Hydro City Hydroplanes. He's had a few informal ones with friends, but some group like the USS would be ideal for getting a hydro circuit set up and running.

@Yngwie Krogstad

Actually Sailors Cove had regularly scheduled hydroplane races, but they died out due to lack of interest.

This is the first time I've heard of it. Either I've been hidden under some rock somewhere, or they didn't do much to make people aware they were happening.

I'm sure I might have known had I been in their group or something, but we only get 25.

Jack specifically said that the new sea is LL-owned land. It is not "free openspaces" but it is navigable water that EVERYONE has access to. That's 40 sims of UNBLOCKABLE water, no banlines, no idiots, no spinny signs. What USS will also do is provide a service that has heretofore been absent - organized sailing events on mainland water.

I applaud the idea.

I understand the concerns about favoritism but let's be honest. Resident partnerships that make sense are A GOOD THING. If you're going to take the time to run a service for the community at large and organize events, then you absolutely should apply to have your estate connected to the mainland. We should have MORE of this, not less. It adds value both to mainland and to estates.

I don't mind the so-called favoritism if it results in a service that makes sense and adds value to the mainland. There should be a high level of organization, it shouldn't any fly-by-night operation.

Bravo. If any other estate can offer that kind of service, then go for it. More is better.

Oh my!!

5 pages of upset estate owners whining? If you're not happy with the way it's run then do something constructive and make proposals like Jack said, or leave.

As an original sim buyer on Nautilus (the original) in 2007, I paid far more than any of you for my sim(s) and I'm really proud of what me and the rest of Nautilus's Finest have created from sand and open water. Where so many have derided mainland and all it stands for, we have actively created our own community, for the benefit of all.
Our section of mainland and the new Nautilus is some of the best designed and co-ordinated, it's fitting therefore that it's connected to what sounds like a well organised estate collective.

I'm sure many other estates have a lot to offer other than blocks of rental or resale's and would greatly enhance the many other themed mainland regions and would be welcomed as neighbours.
(I'm surprised by how many estate owners say they are happy now to connect to the mainland they shunned! Shock horror, what with all them new avatars and those big rotating signs - opps they are long gone lol).

Nope this is simply a forum full of unhappy estate owners still angry about the recent price hikes (go mainland now!) and jealously eyeing their fellow community members who've obviously spent time and resources on creating a viable proposal which benefits everyone.
Anything that enhances the second life experiance encourages the casual visitor to spend more time and maybe money in world. That's good business for everyone. It should also give incentive for all estate owners who offer community orientated facilities to connect to the many protected waters around mainland and I hope Jack considers this to eliminate the favouritism gripe.

I do understand USS will have no powers over the protected waters and will suffer the influx of visitors and occasional griefers onto their regions that we on mainland have come to accept.

Please stop the whining.

I am thrilled to see something like this happening. This will be something different for me to do and recommend to others.

Thats good =)

Is just that Mr Jack Linden didnt say that when he was asked directly. He said the opposite. Maybe he just misheard the question. Hope so anyways.

I not have any problem at all with USS doing whatever they want on their own land. Is ok that they are more closer to the mainland. I hope that lots other people who want to will be able to move closer as well.

As usual I find there's a desperate need for clarification. Please spill the complete terms of the agreement, as this is in essence a public subsidy setup. For instance:

1. Who exactly, will have administrative powers for events in the sea?
2. Will the USS sims become mainland with the same liabilities (i.e. no simwide banning) or do they get special Estate rights still?
3. What commitments to serving the public good did the USS make? Anything?
4. Will other groups be allowed to set up infrastructure and hold full scale events in the Blake Sea? I bring this up because sailing regattas do involve placing quite a few scripted buoys and such.
5. Would the USS in exchange for this big gift open up a process for allowing other group events such as the aerial dogfighting and auto racing clubs? It would be great to get support for all such vehicular groups, much like the old vehicle park writ large. It would also make this a lot more fair.

You know once upon a time you guys did an excellent job of selling your new Public Interest projects like the old vehicle park and sandboxes. This could have made for a nice holiday treat for everyone but you had to go mix it in with yet another controversial taking from some and giving to others. Oh well.

Well, they used to - but can no longer afford to. Many used to run sailing areas but have had to abandon those and LL has now built a sailing area out of the servers from abandoned openspaces.

There is practically no incentive for estate owners to do anything creative as opposed to blocks of rental if anything creative is priced out the market and then taken over by LL or LL created monopolies.

Again, the issue is not what LL has done (create a public sailing area off the mainland) but how they have gone about it

i) this has been asked for, for years, yet LL only actually do it shortly after shutting down many private similar areas by price increases
ii) creating a mainland sailing area not associated with any particular in world group or estate but asking for volunteers to help design/run it from groups such as USS would have been far fairer and less controversial
iii) connecting USS to the mainland as part of a pilot (involving other estates) which if successful would lead the ability for any estate to apply to be attached to the mainland (and determine clear criteria on which that application would be judged if it were not to be automatically accepted) would have been addressed a request some (but by no means all) estate owners have made in the past.

However, LL seems to have done this in about the worst way possible in terms of timing, good public relationships etc. and have managed to do what should have been a postive thing in about the most cack-handed way possible!

Many had hoped M would bring in a new ethos of professionalism and well thought out planning. The whole openspace pricing fiasco suggests that this isn't the case, and this sailing ocean is clearly a knee-jerk reaction to the resultant (and predictable) demise of many private sailing openspaces with the usual lack of proper fore-thought or planning we have come to expect from LL.

Matthew

I only wish there was a fourm where all the crying could go on and not be in every thread.

Seems to me to be a good idea. I am sure lots of people will go and sail there. Also i think if power boat racing is asked for then maybe that could also happen.

I for one would like to see ship battles. I am a pirate and sail pirate ships in battle. The space to do this is usually only 5 or so sims so I dont see why 5 to 6 out of 180 sims could not be set up as a battle area.

This seems to be a better deal than having even more clubs and malls that will go out of biz soon after they open as every one here has the idea they will make lots of money doing it.

I am just here to have fun and this sounds like it will be.

Fair winds

I bet you don't get an answer to this question Qie

I mean not even LL/Jack needs to answer this............someone from USS could answer it too

Well, I am on the fence with Desmond on this one. I do wish USS the best of luck with this venture and see it as a good thing for SL as a whole.

I have a small request though....since I just returned/abandoned/donated 7 OS sims to Blake Sea.....I would like a few named in my honor.

Slightly joking, but kinda not.

Congrats USS

To all those in the Lab, Qie's proposal is far more beneficial to the world than this USS merger. It helps set the boundaries for the continents and provides public sailing space that can be used for exploration. This is helpful to anyone as opposed to vast empty water to be used for races.

And how about a prohibition on ban lines and security orbs on parcels adjacent to Linden water? The internal Linden river on the Atoll is not navigable because of parcel owners disrupting continuous access to these public waterways.

The availability of exploration, once a tenet of Second Life's existence, needs to be addressed. If it can be done in tandem with this outreach to sailing enthusiasts, that's great, but please don't rob Peter to pay Paul, all of the Mainland is in need.

I like to sail as well... What I hope for is that LL will make large group of land sims with a proper airport as well

The Blake Sea should be navigable for anyone at any time because it is connected to mainland. It just happens that USS will be organizing events to take place there. If anything, the nature of this deal (not a "merger" is still more beneficial because it organizes people for events. However, a vast expansion of sailing areas around the continents would be great. Coupled with more organized events, it would be even better.

Qie Niangao needs to do his homework.

The passage he is asking for (and other links between mainland continents) already exists.

Open your MAP feature on the viewer and take a look people.

If you look at the map more closely you will see that only a few mainland continents are actually connected. I like Qie's idea.

After running a set of mainland sailing facilities in Nautilus, Corsica and old mainland continents for the past 18 months, I have some suggestions to add to those of Qie Niangao.

- Enable circumnavigation of Nautilus
- Provide channel from East Corsica to Gaeta
- Provide navigable water sims around the snow sim coast
- ensure all maintenance land (water) is script enabled
- consider air vehicle users as well as sailors
- fix sim crossings for all vehicle users
- Provide map indication for Governor Linden owned maintenance land

It's already possible to circumnavigate Corsica continent using protected maintenance sims, sim-wide channels and sim corners. This is also generally true in SE Nautilus, but not in NW Nautilus.

Starting out clockwise from my base in Oggy, I can generally get to Corsica via the straits at Chalvez, but this depends on cutting a corner through Zukowsky, which is not protected. From there one can circumnavigate Corsica, but trying to circumnavigate Nautilus beyond that point seems to be pretty much hopeless.

Going counterclockwise from Oggy depends on breaking through 3 more sim corners to get to the interior ocean at Gratiano. However there's no way beyond that to the Dunai straits, leading to the southern continent and Nautilus City.

The snow sims have beautiful west facing coasts but there are no maintenance sims there, just a narrow strip of water. It would be great to revitalize this section of mainland by providing a border of sailing sims around this area. This continent (Sansara?) has many inland oceans and waterways, but they are not well connected to the coast.

Sailboats huds don't work in land that is not script enabled. While many initially unscripted sims have been fixed, http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-283 is still in unresolved status.

Finally, having recently enjoyed sailing and beginning to race in the USS, navigating mainland is rather different. It's currently more about the challenge of getting from one place to another; the distances can be enormous, but there are many more hazards such as banlines. Most people stick to Linden owned maintenance water, but there's no way to identify it on the map. It would be useful if maintenance land could be highlighted on the map in a special color like land for sale / auction.

Other Mainland land owners, feel free to reply with suggestions for improvements to your own areas of mainland.

The only thing LL did here that's really unusual is move all the USS sims closer to the mainland. The voidsims between them and the mainland is all LL owned property and LL can do whatever they like with it. So I don't have an issue with LL moving USS and providing voidsims for watersports, especially since anyone from anywhere may use the watersims -- it is not a private USS lake. It is public lands and free (literally free) for anyone to partake of it. Moving the sailing folks to where the water sims will get some good use is a wise strategic decision.

This is also a small gesture to a large group that was badly hurt by the whole Voidsim debacle. It's a nice gesture, but too many others are still damaged by the LL bait-and-switch. I'm glad to see that LL is willing to try to make things right for some of its customers. It's a pity that they aren't willing to be so nice to all of us. I've no beef with helping the USS moving and getting free use of the watersims -- if you want to buy some mainland by them and have a jetski rental place, knock yourself out. The only unfair aspect here is that the rest of us are still stuck with paying more for something we didn't want and didn't buy, or losing our setup fees as we lose the now unaffordable openspace sims.

Since many people nowadays confuse the words "United Sailing Sims'' and ''SL Sailing'', I am going to explain a couple of things here:

USS = United Sailing Sims. This is a grouping of sailing estates that comprises about 130 sims, owned by 9 people. As such, it is homebase to a number of Yachtclubs.

SLSA = SL Sailing Association. This is an association of sailing clubs in SL. This includes the USS-based clubs, but also other clubs sailing from mainland and other estates.

Both organisations have in practice the same people who manage their communications channels, but it is important to distuinguish between them for a simple reason: one group represents a grouping of land owners, the other a group of sailing clubs. While the SLSA includes the USS based clubs, the USS does not represent SLSA members who have other home bases.

It seems in the recent news everyone has used the word USS to describe it in ways that suggest they represent all the sailing clubs in SL Sailing. This is not the case. A number of the largest and oldest sailing clubs associated in SLSA, with groups varying from 300 to 500+ members are not located in the USS and have no direct interest in the USS move to mainland. The risk exists that this happening will actually cause them to be put at a competitive disadvantage when it comes to supporting their respective estates.

In recent forum posts on places like SLUniverse I have seen references to a ''USS Event Calendar" on the USS website. This notion is inaccurate, as the calendar that was placed on the USS-site is actually the SLSA calendar. While this calendar includes USS-based events, it also includes events listed by other clubs, using other venues.

The reactions posted on the calendar and the way people react on it, suggest people think this is the united sailing sims event listing, instead of an overall sl sailing calendar. A quote can illustrate this:


Representing the 3rd largest sailing club in SL, which will not benefit from this move, I am not amused by the use of our event listings by other estates for promotional purposes by the USS, whether this is promotion towards SL users or towards Linden Labs.

Therefore I have issued a protest in the SLSailing forum, asking for this to be rectified:
http://slsailing.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2837

It's helpful to point out the distinction among the various calendars. I gather from the discussion across the street that it could be confusing: apparently USS provides a couple of calendars, one of which includes all its events (not just sailing), and one that pushes just their sailing-specific events into the SLSA calendar. (Or something like that.)
But it *could* benefit anybody associated with sailing in any form, or indeed any kind of nautical or airborne recreation. (Heck, I've even been thinking of scripting up a boat--and I've never wanted to touch the things before this.) The benefits to others won't be proximity to the Blake water homesteads, but with the right attitude and a little promotional effort, it can be a win-win. Enthusiasm for SL sailing doesn't have to be a zero-sum game.

God knows, many Estates still smart from the sting of the OpenSpace clusterf'ck, and so far this is the only public instance of LL working with an affected Estate to make the best of a bad situation. But it would be a shame if those who could benefit less directly from this move were to miss the opportunity.