sailingpj

I've met one person. Even got a chance to see his collection of Sea Scout patches. Most anybody who actually knows me would pretty easily be able to connect me to me. The neverending story was a great book. I was not a huge fan of the movie though. It is hard to capture such a magical world onscreen.

http://wrseascouts.wordpress.com/2012/05/07/saving-our-history/ This is something that would probably be a good thing for people in every program to think about doing.

^^That is very likely to happen. Also, don't expect to be within shouting distance of the other boats. When you get that close lines start tangling, plus each captain will have their own spots that they fish at.

Also don't forget to talk to the captains. I worked on a charter boat for a few years. We would have required that there was at least one adult there to supervise the scouts on each boat.

Talking about college for a moment. Shorter total class length with longer individual classes sounds good to me. The hardest part of school for me is about halfway through the semester. At that point I get really bored with most classes. I would much prefer taking two 9 week classes at a time to taking four 18 week classes. I would be able to give more focus to each individual class, and there is less time to get bored and lose interest. Going to Middle and High school. I work at an after school program. The school administration tells us that we have to be an academic program. That reall

"Some Troops just do one BOR for both ranks, but ours did two seprated BOR's on the same night.. Each concentrating on questions asked of each rank.. Of course the 2nd one went faster, doubt he will have little to add to "What improvements would you suggest for the troop?" Or "What was your favorite troop event?" within the span of 15 minutes. " ///Comedic voice on/// Had I been the kid I would suggested just doing one board with a few extra questions instead of two boards that asked the same thing over again.

Yes, thank you very much. That is a lot of great info.

When did that change to Sea Explorers happen? Apparently we reached our peak during the late 60s and early 70s. After the early 70s the program started shrinking pretty rapidly.

We weren't always such a small group. In the late 60s AMR had 3000+ participants. There were 10s of thousands of Sea Scouts. Just a couple years ago there was less than 6000 Sea Scouts in the country. We are now over 7000 and growing. We are making a comeback. It will take time, but it is happening. Be prepared to see some pretty awesome stuff from us over the next few years, and it is all starting right here in the western region.

Sea Scout Events: It varies, but many are adult led, planned, and executed.

Above the unsquelch link is one that mentions email monitoring. Whatever it says click it and it will take you to another page with the option to stop receiving emails.

I love the Ender books. I read them first when I was 11, and reread them every so often.

I am curious how many events there are around the country that have been running continuously for decades. This was the 32nd year for this regatta. http://wrseascouts.wordpress.com/2012/04/17/sea-farers-regatta/ It is AMR's 60th anniversary this year. http://seascouts100.wordpress.com/2012/04/17/the-ancient-mariner-regatta-the-first-60-years/ This is Old Salts' 64th year. http://www.oldsaltsregatta.com/ Southwestern has been going since 1935. This will be it's 77th year. http://www.rendezvous.org/ Are there any other events around the country with that sort of

Here is what many ships do to recruit new people. Change some of the terminology and it should work for Boy Scouts. http://wrseascouts.wordpress.com/category/sea-scouts/recruiting/

Another thought is to create your own vests to wear when playing those other games with flashlights. That would also be pretty cheap. TI makes some $5 micro controllers that you can get lights sensors for. Wire them up with a bunch of LEDs on the vest and program the micro controller to turn on the LEDs when the light sensors are triggered by a flashlight. I think I just found my summer project. I bet I could do it for under $20 per vest.

Huh, that looks interesting. I've never seen that before.

I know you said you wanted East Coast, but I have to make a pitch for San Francisco. There are non-stop flights into SFO, we have lots of great food, boating, the Golden Gate Bridge, GREAT!!!! views, sailing, coast, and you can drive less than an hour north to see some huge trees. Just south is Monterey with a cool aquarium, and the coastline both north and south is beautiful. There is also plenty of history if that is what you want. The pace can be whatever you want it to be, and we are only 3 hours behind the east coast.

Let me know if you ever make that happen. Obviously one week of training at Sea Base is not enough to get you to Costa Rica, so I'll sign on as Sailing instructor and Navigator.

Individual ships do whatever they want. I know a couple that only do racing, and some that race occasionally, and many that never race. My ship doesn't race because we have a power boat, but I do race. Actually I will be competing in a big Sea Scout sailing regatta this summer.

It depends on what fleet you are sailing in. They have single handed fleets, and fleets for the different sized boats that enter. Some of them finish in 10-13 days, others finish 15- 20+ days. The speed varies depending on the boat. Some boats go 5-8 knots, others go 10+, and some of the multihulls go 18+. Disney did a pretty good movie about it called Morning Light. I believe they left from SoCal, but there are fleets that leave from San Francisco.

If anybody in my crew other than me was SCUBA certified this would be my Quartermaster cruise. We would take a boat down to Monterey, and go SCUBA diving amongst the kelp forests for a couple days. Then cruise home. That would be a blast because so few of my crew ever get an opportunity to do any cruising outside the bay. Another dream cruise would be racing in the Transpac. That is a race to Hawaii.(This message has been edited by sailingpj)

These posts are on The West Wind (Sea Scout Blog), but the theory should be the same for Boy Scouts. Read the first one first, it makes more sense. There will be another post along these lines on wednesday. http://wrseascouts.wordpress.com/2012/04/07/the-importance-of-recruiting/ http://wrseascouts.wordpress.com/2012/04/10/recruiting-tips/

You know, you could get very creative and build catapults as well. That would be hella fun!!

With regards to the phone being handed off, on my ship there are often times when parents end up calling the adults because their kid isn't answering the phone (generally because we are on a boat and people usually leave their phones inside so they don't drop the phones in the water). Often the leader receiving the call just hands their phone off to the kid to answer. 9/10 times the parent is looking to talk to their kid, and our officers have gotten tired of being the messenger.

Let me also explain how active many ships really are. We don't do a meeting a week plus one or two outings a week. Every ship I have been a part of has a meeting about 50 weeks a year, and has a 1-3 day weekend event at least 48 weeks a year. It depends on when the holidays fall. Unless there is a holiday we are doing something on our boats, be it maintenance, cruising, or some form of training, or all of the above. One day of our summer cruise another crew member and I taught a third crew member how to paint the steel deck in 90 degree heat while cruising down the Sacramento river. Many