boat – Bill Ward's Brickpile

Friends Second Wave: Olivia’s Speedboat

This past January, LEGO came out with its new “Friends” line of toys aimed mainly at girls. Since there were 14 sets in the first wave, and I’d just finished a review of the Advent Calendar sets the previous month, I ran a series of blog posts I called “Fortnight of Friends.” This summer/fall, a new second wave of 8 new Friends sets came out, and I’m finally getting around to reviewing them. No guarantees that I’ll keep this up with future sets though…

This is Friends set 3937 Olivia’s Speedboat. You get Olivia with a shovel and bucket, a really clever little sand castle, a beach towel, and of course the eponymous boat (No, there’s nothing wrong with the bow of the boat, I just didn’t snap it together very well and didn’t notice it until I’d already posted the picture, and I’m too lazy to reshoot it, sorry). I like the printed life ring round 2×2 tile on the bow. The boat is made from the same new curved parts as seen in LEGO City Speed Boat 4641. I have mixed feelings about those parts, since they’re not all that useful for other kinds of models, but maybe I’ll find a clever use for them… My favorite thing in this set is the sand castle, I think it’s a really clever little model.

Sailboat

I built this LEGO sailboat to be a scale model of a 25 foot daysailer. It’s been built for a number of years and has appeared on BayLUG/BayLTC layouts when we’ve had a water scene.

Click the image to browse the gallery on Flickr or view them all as a slideshow.

Jumping the Shark

A couple of years ago I created this scene depicting the famous “Jumping the Shark” scene from the TV show “Happy Days.” Here, Richie Cunningham drives the boat pulling the Fonz on water skis as he leaps over a shark to prove his bravery. This is the origin of the phrase often used to describe the point where a TV series becomes lame.

This has been featured in a few of the Bay Area LEGO Train Club displays over the past couple of years, and I have included some of those photos in the photo set on Flickr for this model. To see the pictures, click the image or view a slideshow of the pictures.

Here’s the original video:

LEGO Luxury Motor Yacht

A few months back I was sorting through bins of LEGO and came across an item that has bugged me since I first bought set 7994, LEGO City Harbor.

The cargo ship hull in that set is just a little too big for any container I own, so it’s been sort of bouncing around my LEGO shelves on its own ever since I took that set apart and sorted the parts into my collection.

So as I was holding this darn hull in my hands yet again trying to figure out where to store it, I was inspired to instead try to build something out of it. As a cargo ship, it’s really way too small for minifig scale. But since it’s about 72 studs long it’s just about perfect for a motor yacht!

I did a quick Google search on 72 foot motor yachts and found the Adagio 72 as a PDF file, complete with floorplans. The hull shape wasn’t quite right, and I couldn’t do anything with the forepeak (the triangular area inside the bow) but I figured I could do a pretty good approximation of the floorplan based on the available space in the LEGO hull and set to work…. the result is my Luxury Motor Yacht (slideshow). Hope you enjoy it.

If you want to see it in person, I plan to bring it to BrickFest in Portland later this month, and will also be showing it at Maker Faire at the end of May as a part of BayLUG‘s exhibit there. Stop by and say hi!