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Friendship Ahoy! (Comic Issues 13-14, November 20th, December 18th 2013)

The Mane 6 are off to Horseshoe Bay for a day a the beach. Horseshoe Bay is on the official map, just below Baltimare.

Characterwise Fluttershy is suffering from the same problem she had with the Breezies.

Wait... why are the pineapples up in palm trees? Pineapples grow on bushes... Oh, Applejack has just decided on a weird way of delivering pineapple juice to Rarity. She seems to be doing it the hard way. The pineapple juice has an effect like strong alcohol on ponies, producing a similar effect to sodium thiopental or amobarbital. There are several natural plants that produce that kind of effect, including Scopolia which is also used as a medicine used for seasickness, but pineapple is a new one on me.

In any case, it appears Horseshoe Bay is approximately their equivalent to Florida, with pineapples, palm trees, and the like. As always true in this series the time taken in travel is completely glossed over, making it seem like you can get from Ponyville to Horseshoe Bay in an hour or two at most.

And a pirate ship! Interesting choice to have the skull and crossbones as an actual sail rather than a flag.

And a pirate, complete with pegleg. Peglegs have been used since *forever*, and even in the modern day many amputees prefer a simple

pegleg over modern prosthetics. Peglegs, hooks and the like were associated with pirates, as most navies forced retirement of people who had those kinds of accidents on shipboard, unless you were already of pretty high rank. So in order to keep plying the sea, those people turned to the more illegal careers.

Ha! Gallopinghost Islands. Well done. In this setting those islands are apparently hard to find. In RL the Galapagos Islands are on the other side of Central America from the Caribbean. So if they are following RL, they will need to pass through the Equestrian equivalent of the Panama Canal, or go all the way around. This might be why they say only the brightest navigator can find them, because they're in the wrong ocean to begin with.

The pirate ship is a typical cartoon galleon, with three masts, fore and aft castles, and so on. The number of sails are reduced from RL, but that's typical for artistic purposes.

The pirate captain is talking about the ship being very fast, especially in this 'castaway current'. I had to ask some sailor friends of mine, and they have no idea what he's talking about. That's not a term they're familiar with.

They're trying to do a Captain Jack Sparrow with this character, appropriating Johnny Depp's speech affectations and slang.

Swashbuckling is an old term referring to people who fought with a sword and shield. Specifically a later-period cut and thrust sword (the military version of rapier, with a slightly shorter and wider blade), and a buckler (a small metal shield, usually round and held with a handle in the center, but sometimes square or shaped like corrugated siding.)

They've arrived at Gallopinghost, and they're presenting it like Tortuga in Haiti. Several governments fought over who controlled Tortuga, but due to it's tiny size and honestly poor strategic location, it constantly reverted to self-rule allowing buccaneers to run rampant.

Cute, the various pirates here are clones of other characters. There's a Big Mac and a Granny Smith clone, and so on.

The various stallions are being drawn far more horse-like than ponies normally are. It's entirely possible that several of these are supposed to be from Saddle Arabia originally.

The sword Rainbow Dash pulled is a falchion-like cutlass, often called a cuttoe in English.

Which switches to a Kilij (a turkish sword) in the next page. In the mean time we have a Goonies reference from Rainbow Dash.

*sigh* Nobody noticed Twilight was an alicorn until now? Is there some kind of perception filter (from Doctor Who & Torchwood) going on?

It's a magic map!

Crab vs Rarity? Ghost crab? Nope, just hyped up on energy drinks.

Stuff, stuff, stuff. And here we get to the point where this crosses over with the Shining Sea storybook. We meet the mermares again. Slightly more show-style, but still looking like coronetfish. We learn that they are somewhat xenophobic as a rule, and have laws against associating with land ponies.

Which they break due to the power of love.

Twilight uses the spell from the Shining Sea storybook, and seems to be considering it permanent this time.

And we find out that mantahawks (yet again from the storybook), are normally from the shallows are rarely venture out into deep sea.