Small, useful tools for Second Life.
From the Greek agalma - a thing of delight, given freely.
Small, useful tools for Second Life.
From the Greek agalma - a thing of delight, given freely.
Trim the wind, not the sails.
WindLock is a HUD that lets you set the wind angle relative to your bow - and keeps it there as you turn. Tacks, gybes, harbour manoeuvres, full-tilt reaches across open water: sails stay full, the boat performs, you steer.
One-tap wind speed too. Six speed buttons set wind speed instantly - no chat commands, no typing. Tap "8" for a comfortable cruise, "21" to feel the boat work, "0" to drop to a calm.
It's the relative wind HUD for Second Life sailing yachts. Works across the TMS, Bandit, BWind 2.5, and Isard GLW fleets. One HUD, three protocols, auto-detected.
Same boat, same sails, same trim. Just turn - the wind goes with you.
Wear the HUD, drag it anywhere on screen, sit on a compatible boat. WindLock detects the protocol automatically — you're ready.
Holding the down arrow or S won't slow a sailing boat - it's the wind, not the engine, that drives you.
Comfortable with the basics? Here are the next things to try:
WindLock has been tested working on the following boats:
| Boat | Maker | Type |
|---|---|---|
| Bandit fleet | ||
| Mary Celeste | Bandit | Square-rigged tall ship |
| Bandit IF | Bandit | Folkboat-style cruiser |
| Bandit 25R | Bandit | Weekender / racer |
| Bandit 22 LTE | Bandit | Planing racer |
| Bandit SweetPea | Bandit | Classic small cruiser |
| Bandit Skutsje | Bandit | Dutch sailing barge |
| The Mesh Shop fleet | ||
| Café del Marina 75 | The Mesh Shop | Superyacht |
| Onyx J-Class | The Mesh Shop | J-Class racing yacht |
| Namaste | The Mesh Shop | Luxury cruising yacht |
| I-Mocca 60 | The Mesh Shop | Offshore racing yacht |
| Sunset Ashram | The Mesh Shop | Pilot-cutter yacht |
| Es Paradis | The Mesh Shop | Cruising trimaran |
| Amante | The Mesh Shop | Cruising yacht |
| Star Class Vintage | The Mesh Shop | Olympic-class keelboat |
| Star Class | The Mesh Shop | Modern Star variant |
| Flying Shadow | The Mesh Shop | Foiling catamaran |
| Falcon Class | The Mesh Shop | Sport racer |
| Palain | The Mesh Shop | Cruising yacht |
| Ushuaia | The Mesh Shop | Cruising yacht |
| Ocean Beach | The Mesh Shop | Catamaran |
| Beach House | The Mesh Shop | Cruising yacht |
| Eden Sunrise | The Mesh Shop | Cruising yacht |
| BWind 2.5 | ||
| Laser One | The Mesh Shop | Sailing dinghy |
| Ghost 17 | The Mesh Shop | Foiling catamaran |
| Isard (GLW) | ||
| Snipe | Isard | Two-person racing dinghy |
| Sjogin | Isard | Small classic sloop |
| Mini Transat | Isard | Mini 6.50 solo racer |
| Machichaco | Isard | Traditional Basque ketch |
The Laser One and Ghost 17 have no Auto Pilot, so trim is manual. Set your sail angle, then move the orange tab to find the sweet spot for that trim.
Isard-family boats trim themselves, so the AP button is greyed out in GLW mode. Just set the wind angle and steer.
Organised Second Life races use enforced event wind set by race buoys, which override personal wind HUDs. WindLock is for sailors steering their own boats outside of organised competition - leisurely tours of the Blake Sea, full-tilt blasts across open water, and single-handing two-handed boats for the joy of it.
Some sailors want the wind in world coordinates, locked to the cardinals rather than the bow - and there's a real reason for it. Translating world wind against your heading is the core skill of sailing, and this HUD does that translation for you. WindSock is deliberately simpler: set the wind direction, the wedge stays put as you turn, and you read the sails to find the trim yourself. It's a teaching aid more than a racing tool - good for learners, or for sailors who want to keep the spatial reasoning sharp. Same fleet, same protocols, opposite philosophy. Sibling tools, not competitors - pick the one that suits how you want to sail, or how you want to learn.
Some sailors will see WindLock as a shortcut around skills they've worked hard to build, and that's a fair concern worth addressing directly. So here's what WindLock does, and more importantly, what it doesn't.
WindLock removes one specific friction: tracking wind direction across heading changes. That's the part of sailing that's hardest to internalise from a chair, and it's the friction that puts single-handing a large yacht out of reach for most newer sailors. So much attention goes to where the wind is that there's none left for anything else.
That's all it does. WindLock doesn't trim your sails — on most boats, that's still your job or your autopilot's. It doesn't pick your point of sail. It doesn't navigate. It doesn't read the telltales for you. It doesn't make you a sailor. It just holds the wind angle stable as you turn, so the sails you've trimmed stay trimmed.
The narrow scope is deliberate. Experienced sailors use WindLock when they want to single-hand a two-handed yacht, captain a J-Class without losing the wind on every tack, or run a club excursion where less-experienced members can keep up. Newer sailors use it to focus on reading sails and feeling the boat heel without first mastering five different wind protocols. Both groups still learn to sail. WindLock just removes a specific obstacle in the way.
If you've spent years getting good at managing wind across heading changes by hand, you don't need WindLock, and you'd likely find sailing with it less satisfying than the way you already sail. That's fine. WindLock is for sailors who want more time on the water and less time wrestling with wind systems, on the boats they couldn't quite handle before.
“I can finally enjoy sailing a yacht.”
- Crystal