mashmaster

Scouting is a verb, it is about doing things not sitting down listening. Scouting is about actively doing things, not sitting down in a large class. No merit badges should be instructed to more than 3 or 4 at a time. --- Clarke Green

It doesn't bewilder me. I just read the requirements and fell asleep. What kid 11-18 wants to research a boring topic like this?

I always wondered why there was two. I visited Hawaii and stopped by both council stores to get patches. I still want to get the Maui OA lodge flap though

One thing I have noticed is the some Troops believe the Venturing and Sea Scouting is there to steal scouts from them. Rather than have leaders be open to how units can be cooperative, they actively fight against them which hurts both units. Our healthy Crews and Ships here all have kids that are dual registered and are active in both units.

That is cool, and super cold. Our kids went to Philmont in the first week of the year. It was -8, and super cold. OMG I was so cold. The kids like that they were on water in a different "state", lol. They were even pictured on the Philmont facebook page.

Our day today on a local little lake.

Thanks everyone, it is very interesting to me. I know me son loves it and otherwise would probably be out of scouting but is now a Life rank and planning on his Eagle.

yep, the fact with no scouters is the part that wouldn't fly. The rest absolutely would. An odd experience we had recently at an event. 3 Sea scouts 18+ flew to Texas for the event, uber'ed to the event and returned. No scouters involved. Kinda blew my mind but they were 18+ and totally rocked the experience.

I have never seen a STEM scout. We have a STEM Scout mobile lab here which is pretty outdated. I work for a tech company.

WOW! That sounds awesome. It wouldn't fly now, but amazing. The way I see it, what is the first thing every kid runs to at summer camp? The waterfront or pool. We visited our Ship out of the blue and they put him and his buddy on a sunfish sailboat and set them free. They had the small boat sailing MB already and quickly showed how little they learned at scout camp. 🙂 After some coaching from our pontoon boat about how to right the boat, they spent the rest of the day sailing around. They loved the freedom they had. Now a few of the kids have boat used sunfish boats. They are amazingly cheap, and old. Ours is almost 50 years old.

Well, that would make the observatory visit difficult. Plenty of chill time at camp that night, it is beautiful.

Interesting story. I hope it gets started again. We have had an influx in 14 year olds lately and that is breathing life into our ship. Locally, I have found most troops have no idea what a ship is and then think we are poaching their scouts.

Yep, I am a Mate in a ship. Think of it as an ASM. Sea Scouting was forming by Baden-powell in 1912.

Interesting. There aren't a lot of ships, many of them are no where near the coast. Our ship sails mainly small sailboat on local lakes, there are ships that do mainly paddlecraft too. I can see that impression if they are only out of yacht clubs, most of our scouts in our Ship are not financially well off, it is actually a cheaper program to run that our troop. It sounds like Sea Scout leadership needs to promote the program better in your area.

That is awesome to hear. I hope some of your pack joins a Ship. Or even founds one.