Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

You can carry 10 wood and your hammer with you, drop a workstation at the mouth of your channel, and repair your ship before starting an extended voyage.

You can then dismantle the workstation, pick up the wood and carry it with you. If you take damage during the voyage you can stop by a rock or small island, drop the workstation, repair, pick up the workstation again and continue on your voyage.

If you carry the materials to build a portal with you (and you keep an open portal at your home base) you can drop the work station at your destination and build the portal and connect it to the open portal at your base (make sure that you kill any creatures in range of your portal so they don't destroy it while you aren't there). You can then move anything that isn't metal (or a dragon egg) to and from your home base.

If you make sure that you have room and weight available in your inventory you can stand on the mast of your ship, use your axe to destroy it, recover all the materials that were used in its construction, portal back to your home base, and store the ship components until you are once again ready to sail away. All you need to rebuild the boat is a workstation. No roof required.

Good advice.

On my main world I keep an open portal called ICE (In Case of Emergency) for the times when I'm not near a portal and my travel portal is already paired for some reason.

You don't really have to worry too much about protecting a portal that you leave in the wild. I don't think anything happens there if you're not there. I've had half a fuling village waiting for me at a portal while I took a nap and collected myself on the other side. They pounded me just as I portaled back through, but they didn't touch the portal in the mean time.

The only time I've had a portal "go dark" is when I went through just as a berzerker was taking a swing at me. I think he took out the portal just as I went through.

Originally posted by Faceplant8:

You don't really have to worry too much about protecting a portal that you leave in the wild. I don't think anything happens there if you're not there. I've had half a fuling village waiting for me at a portal while I took a nap and collected myself on the other side. They pounded me just as I portaled back through, but they didn't touch the portal in the mean time.

The only time I've had a portal "go dark" is when I went through just as a berzerker was taking a swing at me. I think he took out the portal just as I went through.

I have had things get destroyed by spawned mobs that I neglected to eliminate before portaling away. I've had the workstation destroyed, the portal destroyed, and the ship destroyed.

Once I started making sure that any mobs that had been spawned while i was there had been destroyed before leaving I never had that problem again and so routinely do that now.

My wife and I once had a terrible time with 2 abominations that had spawned near our swamp landing zone. They would not follow either of us away from the landing area until they had destroyed the workstation, portal, and ship and as soon as we did manage to lead them away, circle back, and rebuild to try and leave they would circle back and start the cycle all over again. After all most 2 hours of that we decided to just bite the bullet and kill the abominations. Once we did that it was pretty smooth sailing. We just headed back to the crypt that we had cleared out and took the scrap iron out of the chest that we had built by the crypt.

Inland channel (no ocean waves) can be at shoulder-neck depth. Basically, you can still walk on the bottom without swimming. your character will not move at full walking speed.

All boats will float and paddle fine at this depth.

Update: If you're using a karve, dont worry about digging till' swimming depth. I dug this channel DEEP for like 2 hours and the karve breezed through it without even coming close to scraping the bottom. Maybe if theres a bigger ship it'd be'd something to worry about.

You can carry 10 wood and your hammer with you, drop a workstation at the mouth of your channel, and repair your ship before starting an extended voyage.

You can then dismantle the workstation, pick up the wood and carry it with you. If you take damage during the voyage you can stop by a rock or small island, drop the workstation, repair, pick up the workstation again and continue on your voyage.

If you carry the materials to build a portal with you (and you keep an open portal at your home base) you can drop the work station at your destination and build the portal and connect it to the open portal at your base (make sure that you kill any creatures in range of your portal so they don't destroy it while you aren't there). You can then move anything that isn't metal (or a dragon egg) to and from your home base.

If you make sure that you have room and weight available in your inventory you can stand on the mast of your ship, use your axe to destroy it, recover all the materials that were used in its construction, portal back to your home base, and store the ship components until you are once again ready to sail away. All you need to rebuild the boat is a workstation. No roof required.

Originally posted by GunsForBucks:

Originally posted by Yung Ducky:

Ah ok, I'm not using this channel necessarily as a parking spot though, its just a cut-through of a thin strip of land that separates the ocean from a big lake thats close to my home. Could just dock there but it'd be long cart trips to-and from the spot across the lake where I'm digging the channel.

It will have to be a pretty thin strip. There is a limit how far inland you can take a stream before it dries up.

You're right about it being a thin strip tho lol, heres a screenie https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2845293460

Originally posted by GunsForBucks:

They float fairly shallow and can pull up on very shallow areas you can walk easily.

Leaving a boat or backing out might be more of an issue... too shallow you may have to push it but I think the verge between the two or the last one before swimming is just fine.

Note that if area is more open to sea storms may batter it against rocks etc.

Ah ok, I'm not using this channel necessarily as a parking spot though, its just a cut-through of a thin strip of land that separates the ocean from a big lake thats close to my home. Could just dock there but it'd be long cart trips to-and from the spot across the lake where I'm digging the channel.

Originally posted by Yung Ducky:

Originally posted by GunsForBucks:

They float fairly shallow and can pull up on very shallow areas you can walk easily.

Leaving a boat or backing out might be more of an issue... too shallow you may have to push it but I think the verge between the two or the last one before swimming is just fine.

Note that if area is more open to sea storms may batter it against rocks etc.

Ah ok, I'm not using this channel necessarily as a parking spot though, its just a cut-through of a thin strip of land that separates the ocean from a big lake thats close to my home. Could just dock there but it'd be long cart trips to-and from the spot across the lake where I'm digging the channel.

It will have to be a pretty thin strip. There is a limit how far inland you can take a stream before it dries up.

Originally posted by GunsForBucks:

Originally posted by Yung Ducky:

Ah ok, I'm not using this channel necessarily as a parking spot though, its just a cut-through of a thin strip of land that separates the ocean from a big lake thats close to my home. Could just dock there but it'd be long cart trips to-and from the spot across the lake where I'm digging the channel.

It will have to be a pretty thin strip. There is a limit how far inland you can take a stream before it dries up.

i dont think thats right, its just that eventually the land becomes too high above water level and you cant dig down far enough to reach it

Running a channel, where the water level is always flat (no waves) and isn't affected by storms, wind, or tide, you could get away with only being about 1 meter deep. The deck you see when looking at the boat is literally the bottom of the model and the lowest point considered for whether water is deep enough to run through (though karves and longships have cargo compartments under their decks, these only exist in a purely abstract sense).

Once you start getting out to the endpoints where tides and waves and all that other fun stuff starts having an effect, then you'll want to start digging to as low as 3 meters below "shoreline" (where beach sand gives way to grass) to keep the mouth navigable during night storms. Generally, for those areas, you'll want to start working during a storm and keep picking away any time you're in a low point of a wave until you just can't pick any more.

Originally posted by Pyro Penguin:

i dont think thats right, its just that eventually the land becomes too high above water level and you cant dig down far enough to reach it

Correct. You can only dig land down a maximum of 8 meters from where it was originally generated (and Raise Ground has an 8 meter limit up), so any spot that started out 8 meters or more above shoreline is never going to be able to touch water (without a certain mod at least, but that one absolutely requires that the server and everyone that plays on that map use it or the whole map can become messed up).

Preferably you should need to swim be able to get across the channel. While the Karve, that is the small one, is slightly more forgiving, the rule of thumb is if you can stand, then use the pick until you no longer can. Less damage to the bottom of your ships that way.
And yes, timing the swing of the pick with the dip between waves will let you dig deeper.

They float fairly shallow and can pull up on very shallow areas you can walk easily.

Leaving a boat or backing out might be more of an issue... too shallow you may have to push it but I think the verge between the two or the last one before swimming is just fine.

Note that if area is more open to sea storms may batter it against rocks etc.

I find the rule of thumb is if it is shallow enough to stand on (when the water is at it's lowest point between waves) then use the pick on it.

I dig and then level all my waterways out using this rule and I have yet to have an issue where I "hit" bottom or rocks when I take my karve down it.

If you aren't swimming you can hit it with the pick again. If you are swimming you can't use the pick. In that case you would have to be on the bank of your canal to go any deeper.