It was a really peaceful journey, only him and the vast ocean. Keith was currently floating through water at a steady six knots per hour, or approximately seven miles per hour. It was quite fast for a ship this size but the various engines he had equipped it with participated in reaching such a speed.
From time to time, Keith spotted some wild live consisting of dolphins and whales coming out of the water to resplenish their lungs with oxygen, but it was such a rare occurence that the rest of the time the young man felt like he was in a desert. A desert full of water, but a desert nonetheless.
Keith was going to the northwest of the continent he just left and was keeping on course using his homemade compass. Fortunately, he did not have to keep on turning the wheel of the vehicle and instead went about business designing some more plans about his future machines. Actually, one of these plans was about making a gyroscope able some slight changes in direction that the young man could be equipping onto his boat to stabilize it while he was away.
It was only at its premices, and Keith knew he would not be able to test this thing out during his initial trip to the new continent. In fact, it required so much knowledge he did not have yet.
Making a simple sensor that activated an electricity current would be a pretty easy task for him to solve, but he would need for this gyroscope to send various types of signal depending on the movement it was recording.
This fact alone was a really though challenge to overcome but then again he also needed the engines of his ship to be able to decipher those signals and act accordingly. On top of that, the structure of a gyroscope itself was pretty complex and required meticulous work so all in all this project was pretty much put on the backshelf of his plans for the time being.
During this long lapse, the young man was not really able to make some substantial progress. This frustrated him a lost, especially because he did not really have anything to do while waiting to discover that new continent. Most of the cargo of his ship was full of wood and other kinds of fuel so he would be able to make it all the way across the ocean. He could not even burn some metal ores up to forge something interesting because he would risk his entire ship to burn out due to the intense heat. This vehicle mostly made out of wood, after all.
'Ugh... This is taking so long...' Keith despered after logging in to Project Overworld for the thirtieth time since the start of his journey across the ocean, only to be welcome by the very familiar view of the infinite body of water.
At first, this scenery was really pleasant to the young man and everytime he would log into the game he would admire the view for several hours straight before being bored. Now, however, he could not stand this situation anymore. He wanted to do something, or even find something interesting.
'Please World, I would even be satisfied by a storm at that point! Just give me something to do!' He exclaimed in his mind. However, he quickly grew to regret his thoughts as he finally came across his first calamity of the trip. At first, this was not even that big of a deal. Waves were hitting the hull of his ship at regular intervals but he was not even that concerned about it and kept on working on his plans.
Unfortunately, after another couple dozen of minutes, Keith's ship navigated straight into the heart of the storm. By that point, waves of several meters high became common occurence and the young man started panicking. Water was flooding the basement of his ship, which was really bad news for him because it was where all of his stocks of wood were lying. And everyone knew wet wood was a really poor source of fuel.
Though, Keith's boat design was made in a way water could be evacuated through small holes in the hull, preventing the whole structure from being flooded. Keith immediately closed off the sails of his ships so they would not be torn by the winds. Afterwards, the young man went around the dock of his creation, using a bucket to evacuate as much water from there as possible while praying to the gods. He knew it was pointless but he could not just let the storm pass by without trying his best to survive.
After half an hour of intense battling with the tides, Keith and his boat finally left the battlefield wet to the bones, but unscathed. This has been a really scary experience to the young man and afterwards he quickly dispersed all of his thoughts of wanting to go through a storm again. Actually, he became quite supersticious and avoiding thinking about the subject at all.
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For the rest of the trip, lasting for another couple of months, Keith went through similar calamities but always managed to get through it without much damage to his ship. Though, his wood stocks were really wet as of now and the young man eventually had to build a small furnace to dry them all up for later use. It was a risky activity but he would lose a lot of speed if he did not do it since his vehicle's engines would not be working properly.
Thinking about all his past and future projects, Keith was happily humming while looking at the horizon. After going through these awful experiences, the young man grew to enjoy the stillness of the ocean even more than when he embarked on his journey back then. Every day he would enjoy the wind brushing the hair off of his face while listening to the strangely mesmerizing sound of the ship going through the water at huge speed.
'Huh, isn't the horizon a bit off today? Has it always been like that before?' Keith let out a yawn before scrubing his eyes and watching the scenery with more focus.
'Wait... this line... This isn't the ocean!' He rhapsodized. After another couple dozen of minutes, his suspicions were confirmed. He had finally found land!
It took a few hours for his ship cover that distance, but Keith was so excited he did not even notice time flying by. However, it would be fairly dangerous to approach land with a speed of six knots. Once he was only a mile away from there, the young man thus closed off all the sails of his ship and let the large structure acoast this new land by itself.
A few dozen minutes later, Keith finally jumped off the ladder of his ship and awkardly landed on the shore. It was white from the sand that littered it and the young man spotted off some tall trees in the distance. It seemed like the climate was rather tempered as lots of plants were found throughout the lanscape.
After several hours, Keith decided to postphone his exploration for as it was already four in the morning. He even had classes to attend to tomorrow and the young man felt really down at the perspective of waking up in only a few hours.
The next day, once he came back from school, the shore he had disconnected onto welcomed him in all its glory.
'Finally...' He breathed out. Back then, Keith would always be fearful to disconnect in the middle of nowhere because other players could stumble upon his body while he was away and kill him off without any troubles. Now, however, he knew nobody would be able to cause him any harm.
He had yet to learn about any player reaching another continent and for all he knew he was pretty certain he was the first to go through such an journey. Who in their right mind would lose over six months of their time building a ship and sailing across the ocean?
Though, Keith's decision was clearly thoughtful and he had studied a lot of possibilities before embarking on this trip all the way there.
'Anyways, let's settle down a few miles away from the shore and I should be fine for a year, at the very least!' He motivated himself before unloading his ship of all the resources he had put on board.