Chapter 82 The First Voyage of the Small Town

As the only professional with sailing experience, Lightning obliged to serve as the navigator.

In fact, she was also very interested in this barge with strange shapes and strange materials. Although it looked extremely crude, it had all the necessary parts for a ship, and she wasn't sure if it could move. After all, she was mostly a bystander at sea, and her father always refused her requests to steer or hoist the sails himself.

In keeping with the tradition of new ships setting sail, Lightning smashed a pitcher of ale over the bow before ordering the sails to be hoisted. As the commander, Carter was naturally unwilling to let the little girl take the position, so after she finished shouting, the knight would always follow up with the same order.

The sails of the Small Town are made of animal skins, most of which are cowhide and sheepskin, mixed with some special products of Border Town, such as wolf skin and bear skin. So it looks different shades, brown, white and gray, like patched rags. The sail is trapezoidal in shape, separated by four wooden sticks as beams in the middle, and the cables pass through the iron ring at the top of the mast and hang down on the deck. As long as the cable is pulled, the entire sail can be raised.

To make handling as easy as possible, the town's front and rear sails are single sails, parallel to each other and perpendicular to the centreline. If an ordinary two-masted sailing ship is set up like this, one sail will suffer very little wind, which is almost equivalent to being useless. But with Wendy's ability to control the wind, this design will make the power evenly distributed on both sides of the center line, making it easier for the helmsman to operate the direction.

Seeing that the sail had been hoisted, Lightning directed the workers on land to untie the hemp rope. The weather at this time was not bad, with occasional snowflakes falling from the sky, driven by the light wind and current, the boat slowly left the shore.

The little girl landed beside Brian and shouted, "Full starboard!"

Carter followed suit and shouted: "Full starboard!"

"Uh, what does full starboard mean?" Brian scratched his head. "How many turns to the right?"

"No, turn left to the end," Lightning said with his hand on his forehead, "Forget it, let me do it."

She forgot that this group of people was operating a sailboat for the first time, and they didn't even understand the meaning of the basic instructions. If it is a standard two-masted sailing ship, I am afraid that the sails are not even spread out now. Even if there are less than ten people, the stone boat can be successfully left the shore. It can only be said that the design of the small town is indeed unique.

She held the handle of the steering wheel higher than herself, lifted her feet off the ground, and turned to one side—the huge horizontal steering wheel is very heavy for ordinary women, and it is equivalent to overcoming the resistance of water to do work without mechanical assistance , pull the entire iron rudder surface under the bottom of the ship. But all this is not a problem at all for the flying lightning. She noticed that there was a blocking piece under the tiller to prevent turning her head, and she couldn't help being a little curious. I heard that this ship was designed by His Royal Highness, why did he know such details clearly? You must know that even sailors who stay at sea all year round may not necessarily know the structure of each part of the ship.

"Sister Wendy, let the wind rise."

Wendy stood on the roof, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. It turned out that His Highness asked her if she had a fear of heights because of this reason. Propelling the sailboat by yourself? Thinking of the tasks I usually do, such as air-drying meat, drying clothes, etc., I suddenly felt a subtle sense of contrast. She opened her hands and entered the state of usual practice, allowing the wind to blow evenly from her feet and above her head, trying to make the wind force on the two sails equal as much as possible.

To be honest, Wendy never expected that this seemingly simple request would be so difficult to operate.

Despite having awakened as a witch fifteen years ago, she has never attempted to gain a deeper understanding and control of her powers. Whether it is summoning a rapid airflow to wrap stones to attack the enemy, or summoning a gust of wind to sweep the enemy away, a large amount of magic power is released at one time. When dealing with chores in the camp, the wind is sometimes strong and sometimes weak, as long as the purpose can be achieved. Now thinking of Anna's serious appearance during practice, Wendy suddenly felt a little ashamed.

"The first thing you have to do is to practice your ability repeatedly until you fully master it—just like Anna."

It turns out that this is not a cliché.

So let's start now... She took a deep breath and focused all her attention on the wind sensing.

Although the wind was not completely balanced, the sails still swelled, the continuous thrust made the mast creak, and the bow began to swing to starboard.

"It actually moved," Carter exclaimed.

"His Highness made a boat out of stones, and let it float on the water," Tigu said with a smile, rubbing his beard stubble. "Is there anything else he can't do?"

The Small Town was getting farther and farther away from the river bank, gradually driving in the middle of the river.

Wendy can only generate wind power out of thin air, but cannot make the existing north wind disappear. Under the action of the two wind forces, the forward direction of the ship is not in a straight line, and must be adjusted by turning the rudder. There is no way for Lightning to explain this point clearly, so Brian can only experience it for himself. In order for him to grasp this feeling as soon as possible, the little girl directed him to make several large rudder surface changes, and then made further fine adjustments after feeling the relationship between the steering wheel rotation angle and the swing amplitude of the bow.

After sailing on the Chishui River for more than half an hour, Wendy couldn't hold on for the first time.

It's not that the magic power is exhausted, but that the body has reached its limit.

Even if you wrap your body in the shape of rice dumplings, you can't completely resist the cold wind. A thin layer of snowflakes had accumulated on her cotton hat, her hands and feet were so cold that she was about to lose consciousness, and she was precariously standing on the ceiling. If Lightning hadn't discovered something strange while cruising in the air, maybe she would have persisted until she passed out of a coma.

Lightning quickly flew to Wendy's side, grabbed her body tightly, and at the same time yelled for Brian to come to the shore.

The latter beat the steering wheel dead to starboard, and the bow slowly veered to the left. Lightning also flew down with Wendy. Although only one sail could be blown on the deck, at least it could temporarily shelter from the wind and cold so as not to lose body temperature too quickly. Moreover, Lightning did not dare to entrust a novice who had just learned how to steer a job like docking that required fine control—even though she was also not very good at it.

After a lot of tossing, the Small Town finally docked, and the moment it collided with the river bank, everyone's hearts were raised. The hull of the ship made a dull sound when it hit, but fortunately, it didn't look like a serious problem. A group of people quickly gathered the sails and set up the springboard to go ashore.

Fortunately, during the sea trial, everyone did not choose a straight line to go to the end, but turned around and practiced back and forth in the spacious part of the river, so the small town did not leave the starting point too far.

Lightning flew directly towards the castle with Wendy on his back. Carter looked at the stone boat and sighed. Without the help of the witch, they would never even try to drive the boat back to the pier.

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