Sailing

What it governs

• A knowledge skill: hull design, rigging, how to direct an assembly, navigation, seamanship. The ship is Sailing's even though every component comes from somewhere else — so a shipyard is the first joint enterprise in the world.Charter, Part V — Utility group
• Navigation is knowledge, not a map the world provides. Dead reckoning, the sun, the stars — and in the south a moon that never sets, which is what steers the Lunar road. Getting lost is real.
• Charts are made by citizens, and they are the most valuable paper in the world. A false one is a weapon.
• Wind is prevailing by latitude, and sailing with it or against it is not the same thing — which makes route knowledge a tradable expertise. The level is how close to the wind you can hold and what speed you get out of it.
• The sea keeps what it takes. Wrecks stay where they sank and can be salvaged, by anyone with rope and nerve.
• A big hull sails badly with one person on it. Crewing trains the skill at watching rates — and mutiny is available the day somebody thinks of it.
• Gunpowder is discoverable: sulfur, saltpeter and charcoal, with no hint anywhere. If anyone reaches it, stone stops being immune and every military balance in the charter quietly expires — and nobody in the world will know that.

The order it goes in

The vessel ladder. The step that matters is the third: the sail has to be conceived, and that is a first-fire-grade epoch.

1. Canoe — which Woodcutting already reaches.Charter, Part V — Utility group
2. Raft.
3. Skiff — the first thing with a sail on it.
4. Sloop.
5. Clipper.
6. Schooner or junk.
7. A galleon-class flagship: a settlement-scale project with a full crew, and as rare as a cathedral.