Firstly, thanks for considering buying this boat.
It is modelled closely on the coastal cargo boat used principally around the Scottish West Coast and Western Isles to provide a vital cargo delivery/collection service to otherwise largely inaccessible small communities.
It also provided an important service supplying warships during World War 1 and the Admiralty subsequently ordered a series for use during WW2 under the classification VIC - Victualing Inshore Craft. The basis for this model model is VIC32 but for SL I have reclassified it as CP1.
The Clyde Puffer's widespread fame comes from the short stories of Neil Munro, subsequent film - The Maggie, and later televised series, The Vital Spark.
The operation of the boat is relatively simple with up and down arrows providing forward and reverse drive, and left and right arrows providing steering. The speed settings are stepped so that you do not have to keep the arrows continuously depressed. You do however have to step sequentially through the 'gears' to get to full speed and back to stop. Reverse is similarly stepped.
The on-screen display will tell you your speed setting along with compass bearing and also - importantly for inshore vessels - the water depth and keel clearance to help you avoid running aground.
The door to the bridge cabin opens on touch and will eventually auto close when the captain gets too chilled to leave it open any longer but a second touch before this period will close it anyway.
The navigation lights are automatic and will turn on/off dependant on the the SL day/night cycle.
The Page Up key will sound the horn and alert anyone in the vicinity that you're bearing down on them with little chance of rapid manoeuvring to take avoiding action.
The Page Down key is an emergency stop - hit it and the engine room relay bell will ring frantically and the boat will come to a halt in a reasonably short distance.
It's not a speeder - top speed is around 7 knots - and is relatively slow to respond to turning commands but this is intentional to reflect the real life behaviour of the boat.
You will need a reasonable space to rez her - base hull dimensions are 21 x 7m, but the depth clearance is only 2.2m and you can navigate relatively shallow waters.
I have set a passenger position so that someone can join you on the bridge to keep you company on the long voyages. Just remember that as captain you have to board first and your passenger then just clicks and sits.
I hope you have as much fun and enjoyment pottering around the coastal waters and harbours of SL in command of CP1 as I did building her.
Carbon Philter
August 2011
- Stepped gears to prevent continuous key pressing
- Ship's horn and automatic navigation lights
- Opening bridge door, rotating propellor
- On screen engine speed/bearing/depth display
- Wake generated by bow and propellor
love on the first moment..But
A lovely boat love on the first moment and she tuks and tuks i find her a beaty , the less part is the shimmy is blur my fy sight thats a bit pitty its not mod , a bit replace that smoke pipe and we have a real to fall in love . i ask fore a mod version , comes i am am a 7 years in sl mouse look sailer and pilot if its not replaced , it wil be as a model :( to my big collection and i wil try to find another love .. well thats sl . run things first . Rating as a model a fat 3 star Michelle counting on a good service .
eye catching and great display
nice display at any provincial port and also to my place BAY OF WOW. and i never met another one under power when driving her around, so she is eye catching when taken to sea
Beautiful, honest and quaint little boat. Minor issues.
Wonderful little boat. If I am to be honest, I'd prefer it with mod perms so that I can give her other hull colours, not that there's anything wrong with this one's colours, I just like to personalise my stuff.
Overall impressions are good. I have noticed some minor issues with the script though. I've had different copies of this work up to a point and then suddenly refuse to move even while scripts are still running. Also noticed these 2 script errors popping up:
"Clyde Puffer with passenger 1: Too many sound requests. Throttled until average falls."
"Puffer Bridge Control Panel: Could not find sound '(null)'."
Nontheless I can't deny this is generally a wonderful little build and high quality model-wise too. Certainly not something I'd expect to go for below 1k L$, so it IS practically a steal.
There could be 2 minor improvements added to this product as well. One is for the smokestack to stop emitting smoke particles when the boat is moored up, the 2nd is to have an on/off switch for AVs to switch the engine scripts off while the AV is still seated.
Overall a 4 star due to the minor issues and the room for improvement. If and when an update does arrive I will be ammending this review to reflect updates.
I do hope that Carbon will produce more boats, if this first foray into marine products is an indicator of the standard and quality of potential future products.
Good product
This is a fun boat. Very realistic handling an well build.
Five stars.
Cheers.
YM