mashmaster

We tell them no aerosal bug spray or sunblock. Not because of the fire hazard but because the sunblock is less effective and they have a tendency to go off in someones bag.

Disclaimer: This did not happen in my troop. This weekend at our camporee a scout from a troop decided to get out of his tent after lights out and play flamethrower with pam and a lighter. The pam caught on fire, kid panicked and tossed the can into the field and set the camp on fire. Fire department camp out and put the fire out, nobody was hurt, and no structures were touched. If this were your scout, what would you do? I am thankful that everyone is ok, and that it isn't one of my scouts.

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 We have a STEM Scout mobile lab here which is pretty outdated.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.

I was wondering what people here know about Sea Scouting. What are you impressions of it? Do you know what it is? Have you met a Sea Scout? Have you involved Sea Scout Ships with your Troops, Crews, Packs? Did you know it has bee around for over 100 years?

The interesting side note to me, is all the banner years for Eagle scouts recently.... I certainly feels that getting Eagle must be easier now than it was with larger amounts of scouts.

My son is involved with a Troop, Crew, and Ship. The Troop seems to have a focus on camping and honestly the scouts lose interest around 14 and don't want to be around all the younger scouts. They try to lead but the younger boys don't listen. The linked girl troop is super young and they are so focused on advancement (actually the parents are) that they still are trying to figure out what scouting is really about. That will just take time IMHO, and become similar to boy troops. The Crew basically hangs around and plays ping pong. They do some things but it is clearly chill time for them. They aren't interested in advancement and want to do a couple of bigger things a year, they are too busy will school to devote a ton of time to camp every month for example. The Ship is small but very active. They aren't super concerned about advancement but always attend meetings, activities, and even boat maintenance. IMHO, this focus of water activities helps provide a distrinct focus for them and they have fun doing it. Crews don't seem to have a similar focus even with being the same age group. Many of our kids are in all three units. That all aside, National basically told everyone to get their Venture or Sea Scouts registered in a girl troop, which is annoying. They are purposely cutting the legs out from venturing by doing that.

Ventures lumps in Sea Scouts which I would like to know the numbers for, I know our numbers nationwide are up but a blip. Were Teams bundled in with Ventures? If so, the drop would make sense. Look for a big drop next year overall, when the LDS church is fully out of BSA.

When you go to BTSR there is a night in the middle of the week reserved to go to the Observatory, you need to provide transportation but worth it vs. spending another night just for it. The camp basically doesn't do much that night since they know a lot of people go tot the oservatory. It is pretty awesome. Buy your tickets to the star party early.

I shall.

Yeah, everything is uphill there. I forgot about the climbing, it is on real cliffs, pretty exciting. If you go there spend the night before at Balmorea state park and swim in the newly re-opened pool.

Not sure if this is the right forum or not. But today I was asked by a scoutmaster of a Troop with girls in it to help a couple scouts with a merit badge since I am a counselor for it. Of course I said yes. The Scoutmaster told me after my response that a majority of counselors are saying no to her because they don't want to work with girls. I don't understand why a scouter wouldn't want to help any youth out.