"Hull-abaloo." Know your displaced sky.

Well, there, mates.
We all know that a boat floats, right? It's based on displacement. (Now *how* this works on the Pirate101 Skyways, well that's just the *magic* of it all, isn't it?). Seeing as I'm no Merle Ambrose, I'll stick to the trivial bits off of flotsam and jetsam that I do know.

As I've said before "A boat is a hole in the water that one throws money into", and that's true enough. However, there are many shapes of "hole" that one might choose.

We're talking hull design, here. Usually when one thinks of a ship, be it a Spanish Galleon, The Mayflower, or yes, even The Black Pearl, those are all just *one* type of boat, regardless of the sail plan. These are all "Monohulls". By far, this is the most common design around. The Monohhull is like the Microsoft Windows of boat design, found everywhere, across most of the planet.

But, there are other ways of going out to sea, and the "other side of the coin" to a monohull is a "Multihull". Instead of just *one* hull, these ships have, as the name suggests, more-than-one hull.

The Multihull category has several variations, those being the catamaran, trimaran, and proa.

A) Catamaran B) Proa C)Trimaran D) Monohull

Now, with so many choices,, why do we stick primarily to monohulls? To be honest, it's about weight capacity. Monohulls can carry, by far, the most on cargo. From the days of yore, to the present, most sea trade has been based on volume. From breadfruit to Oil, a monohull has always been, and always will be the King of Ocean Shipping.

So, why even have "other" designs, then? Depends what you want to do. The more a ship displaces, the deeper it's draft. A ship's draft is basically how *deep* in the water is sits, determining how close it can come to land before it runs aground. If the water by a dock is 12 feet deep, and a ship has a draft of 15 feet, that ship will not be able to reach the dock, making loading/unloading a difficult proposition.

Many multihulls have what's known as a "shallow draft" , meaning you can basically run it right up on to a beach. Your average camping canoe is a "shallow draft monohull". Multihulls are considerably faster, although they can carry (significantly) less weight.

From a pirate's perspective, a multihull, though exceptionally faster than a monohull, wouldn't bee a good choice, (because cannons are heavy), and they couldn't carry as much loot. But for sailing vast distances, lightly provisioned, one would be hard-pressed to beat a multihull.

And since we are talking Pirate 101, with the sneak peeks we've seen already, we'd be remiss to mention *another* type of hull, limited only to the imagination: The "Bio Hull"

"Space Turtles, mate."

A "Bio Hull" has long been a staple of lore. Be it turtles, whales, dracoliches, what-have-you. The idea of a man-made structure on the back of a living creature, has long been an accepted concept. And to leave you , today, my "Naughty-Call" video selection of the day.