Sea Serpent

When I was a child, I loved the LEGO castle series. One of my all time favorite set was the Sea Serpent. Even though it wasn't a viking longship but more a medieval Kogg style of ship, it always made me think of norse longships. Unfortunately I never had that set. When LEGO came out with the Viking series I had to fulfill that childhood dream. I loved that LEGO made specific hull pieces for the longship but when I compared it with my medieval lego city it always seemed a bit to bulky. So I took up the challenge to design my own brick build slim longship when I was studying engineering at university. Of course I went completely overboard and tried to make it as realistic as possible. So I came up with the boat a pretty good 1300 piece ship. I even went the extra mile to sow a functional sail which could be rigged in different positions and sizes or just rolled up. It went so far that I build my own rope twisting rigg to create LEGO sized ropes from sowing yarn and made a functional rigg for the boat. It looks quite realistic and it even has a hoist function and quick release to drop the sail when you quickly need to stop to go on viking. Unfortunately the boat I build uses a lot of old LEGO pieces that were not allowed in this challenge so I had to adjust it to fit into the BDP3 palette and what you see is the result.

So I came up with a new version, the Sea Serpent. This time I had to simplified the rigg and made a bricksail instead. However it would still be possible to create the same rigging as my old version. This longship has the option to both put down the sail and the mast on those T-shaped poles for storage on deck. This is why the studio file contains 2 versions of the buildable sail. The ship comes with 18 (plus 2 extra) oars and can be rowed by up to 18 oarsmen/-women. The rudder can be easily switched from the back to the front in case of a quick retreat without turning the boat. Just like the real longships were constructed. When under sail the oars can be store in special racks on deck along with bows, spears and axes. In case you want to settle new lands in Iceland or sail to Vinland, There is even space for a cow and a horse in the storage compartments in front and behind the mast. In that case you need to take out the doors in the deck. but for everything else it is possible to just store it under the deck within those compartments. There is plenty of room for a few treasure chests.

As I said the build is quite accurate to a real longship and the hull made out of slope pieces is actually hold by a rib construction just like the real deal. You can see this in one of the renderings. In contrast to my original version I decided to make it more colorful as these ships were also painted vibrantly, when they sailed the seas 1000 years ago. My version at home is placed on the stand you can see in the second render and the main picture shows the ship on a small pier. But if you prefer a more scenic MOC, I have designed that pier so that it could be fitted into a modular Viking village. So to have the boat tied up and floating at the dock, ready to be loaded with all the goods necessary for an adventure.

The whole mock has around 2146 pieces including the pier. This way i could fit 4 figures into the set :). There are multiple options build into the hull to hold different types of lego shields. As you can see in the last rendering different shields require different shield mounts. With the new viking village coming out this fall their might be a chance to get proper viking shields incorporated into this set once it releases. As I already have designed all the different shield mounting systems it would be quite easy to adjust the ship to carry any of the currently available shield types.

I hope you like this MOC as much as I do and vote, vote vote until 'hel' freezes over and Ragnarök comes.