Update: please share your opinion and support Marianne McCann and our proposals by posting a comment on the Second Life blog!
Yesterday Michael Linden announced on the Second Life blog the creation of 23 Homestead regions to improve navigability around the Nautilus continent, as you can see in the following map:
Interesting enough, all the new regions are named after popular Italian town resorts in Tuscany, Umbria and Piedmont. That certainly caught my attention.
The Linden Lab Department of Public Works (LLDPW) has been quite busy improving mainland lately. Another welcome improvement was the work done in the Sea of Fables. As a community that traces its roots from the sailing community we are happy about this, of course.
I also took advantage of this announcement to bring to the attention of Michael Linden and the LLDPW another needed improvement that has been requested by me and other people from the sailing community on different occasions: the Northern Passage.
The Northern Passage, this is how sailors familiar with the waters in the area north of the Mowry Bay Yacht Club (MBYC) call a very thin strip along the coasts of the Grange, Carnforth, Furness, Alston and Maryport regions. The Northern Passage is quite a challenging trait for the sailors who want to circumnavigate the Maryport – Seascale Point, coming from the MBYC and the Hepurn race line and taking the East River Community – Sea of Fables route, and viceversa. This passage is often blocked by buildings and ban lines and it is almost impossible to pass it with a large boat.
Filling this void would improve the navigability between the northern shores of Sansara and the East River Community – Sea of Fables area. About 10 Homestead regions would be required to fill the void.
After sending a notecard to Michael Linden I found that Marianne McCann made a similar request for the area of Nova Albion and Bay City, as reported here. Amusingly, she calls it the Southern Passage. What an interesting coincidence. My best wishes to Marianne for having her request accepted, perhaps we could team together to have both requests approved. After all, improvements to the navigability of the grid benefit all the Second Life sailors.