Sea Scouting

[mashmaster]

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?

[karunamom3]

Last summer we took our cub scout pack on a trip around the Statue of Liberty on a sea scout ship. It was by far the best outing our pack has done in the last 10 years. It was, interesting, fun and a real educational experience. One of our Cubs plans on joining the SS when he is old enough because of his great experience on that trip.

[walk in the woods]

According to beascout.org there are 0 ships within 20 miles of my home zip code, 2 within 20 miles of my Chicago work zip code.  One of those ships is charted to a yacht club on Lake Michigan.  My impressions of Sea Scouting is it's mostly a coastal elitist kind of thing.

[mrkstvns]

21 minutes ago, mashmaster said:

Did you know it has bee around for over 100 years?

No.  For some reason, I thought it was a brain-child of the 60s or 70s era.

I take it you are involved with a ship...

[Eagle94-A1]

50 minutes ago, mashmaster said:

I was wondering what people here know about Sea Scouting. 

Yes, quite  aware. I was an Ordinary Sea Scout.

 

50 minutes ago, mashmaster said:

What are you impressions of it?  

Mixed. My ship was not a traditional ship. While I learned a lot and had some fun, It did not meet my expectations. Sadly they were the only ship within 50 miles of where I lived. If I had known how good the next ship over was, I would have driven the 2 hours round trip for their meetings ( usually 4-5 hours on a Saturday every two weeks. Sailing of course)  Their ship had the first Quartermasters in my council in a number of years, and a National Boatswain came out of that ship.

50 minutes ago, mashmaster said:

Do you know what it is?

Have you met a Sea Scout?

Yes.

 

50 minutes ago, mashmaster said:

Have you involved Sea Scout Ships with your Troops, Crews, Packs?

Growing up, Somewhat. We had Scout Shows, and the Sea Scouts there would gravitate towards my troops event. We had two pioneering towers connected  with a Boatswain's Chair to create a ride,

Closest the Cub Scout pack did was when I would wear my old Sea Explorer/Scout uniforms when we stayed aboard the USS YORKTOWN.

 

50 minutes ago, mashmaster said:

Did you know it has bee around for over 100 years?

Since 1912! Older than the OA.

[SSScout]

Well, it does help if you are close to water.  My home CO chartered  a SeaScout Ship back in the late 1950's , the Skipper was a CPO retired....  They went down the Potomac on a raft of 50gallon drums built into a raft, and up  the Chesapeake bay . Eventually, the local SS s named their local Regatta (read wet camporee) after him, the Nygard Regatta :    http://www.ncacbsa.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/52nd-nygard-boarding-manual.pdf   

SSS759 had fun and excitement until recently.  They were last  bottomed with 2  - 30' sloops, but the Unit disbanded two years ago, due to lack of active members. The boats were sold to pay off the slip fees, etc.  ....   We are locally working to "refloat" it.... 

Like all Scout things, you need some dedicated Scouters, and a local Charter, and some really interested teenagers.  

""Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”

[mashmaster]

1 hour ago, karunamom3 said:

Last summer we took our cub scout pack on a trip around the Statue of Liberty on a sea scout ship. It was by far the best outing our pack has done in the last 10 years. It was, interesting, fun and a real educational experience. One of our Cubs plans on joining the SS when he is old enough because of his great experience on that trip.

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

[mashmaster]

52 minutes ago, walk in the woods said:

According to beascout.org there are 0 ships within 20 miles of my home zip code, 2 within 20 miles of my Chicago work zip code.  One of those ships is charted to a yacht club on Lake Michigan.  My impressions of Sea Scouting is it's mostly a coastal elitist kind of thing.

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.

[mashmaster]

54 minutes ago, mrkstvns said:

No.  For some reason, I thought it was a brain-child of the 60s or 70s era.

I take it you are involved with a ship...

Yep, I am a Mate in a ship.  Think of it as an ASM.

Sea Scouting was forming by Baden-powell in 1912.  

[mashmaster]

14 minutes ago, SSScout said:

Well, it does help if you are close to water.  My home CO chartered  a SeaScout Ship back in the late 1950's , the Skipper was a CPO retired....  They went down the Potomac on a raft of 50gallon drums built into a raft, and up  the Chesapeake bay . Eventually, the local SS s named their local Regatta (read wet camporee) after him, the Nygard Regatta :    http://www.ncacbsa.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/52nd-nygard-boarding-manual.pdf   

SSS759 had fun and excitement until recently.  They were last  bottomed with 2  - 30' sloops, but the Unit disbanded two years ago, due to lack of active members. The boats were sold to pay off the slip fees, etc.  ....   We are locally working to "refloat" it.... 

Like all Scout things, you need some dedicated Scouters, and a local Charter, and some really interested teenagers.  

""Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”

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.

 

[Eagle94-A1]

Since we are telling sea stories 😁

 

Of the ASMs who got me interested in Sea Scouts was a Quartermaster. His Sea Scout Ship was at Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek , VA and needed a vessel. Somehow, they got a hold of a WWII PT boat IF they could get it seaworthy and USCG approved. Oh and they had to pick it up in Maine.  The Sea Scouts, without any adults taking along, went up to Maine, spent 3 weeks repairing her and getting her USCG approved. Then they spent a week or two cruising down the eastern seaboard from Maine to Little Creek, VA. His stories got me interested in Sea Scouts.

[mashmaster]

30 minutes ago, Eagle94-A1 said:

Since we are telling sea stories 😁

 

Of the ASMs who got me interested in Sea Scouts was a Quartermaster. His Sea Scout Ship was at Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek , VA and needed a vessel. Somehow, they got a hold of a WWII PT boat IF they could get it seaworthy and USCG approved. Oh and they had to pick it up in Maine.  The Sea Scouts, without any adults taking along, went up to Maine, spent 3 weeks repairing her and getting her USCG approved. Then they spent a week or two cruising down the eastern seaboard from Maine to Little Creek, VA. His stories got me interested in Sea Scouts.

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.

[mrkstvns]

34 minutes ago, mashmaster said:

WOW!  That sounds awesome.   It wouldn't fly now, but amazing.

Maybe not the way Eagle94-A1 described it, but a ridiculously awesome adventure could still be done *IF* you have a motivated ship with committed scouts and scouters.

Check out this story of a ship that did a 3-week cruise to Alaska...

https://boyslife.org/video-audio/148626/its-all-hands-on-deck-for-a-sea-scout-cruise-to-alaska/ 

 

[mashmaster]

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. 

[HelpfulTracks]

7 hours ago, mashmaster said:

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?

I am aware of it. Looks very interesting. I wish I had the time to add it to my Scouting repertoire.

I have met several Sea Scouts including a Quartermaster, a couple of Skippers and even a Commodore. And I am aware that it is almost as old as Scouting.

There also used to be Air Scouts, wish we still had that. 

7 hours ago, walk in the woods said:

According to beascout.org there are 0 ships within 20 miles of my home zip code, 2 within 20 miles of my Chicago work zip code.  One of those ships is charted to a yacht club on Lake Michigan.  My impressions of Sea Scouting is it's mostly a coastal elitist kind of thing.

We are hundreds of miles from any coast and have at least 2 Ships (Sea Scouts version of Troops). At lest one of them is at a "Yacht Club." I put it in parenthesis because 99% of the boats in that club are small sail boats, pontoons, house boats or motor boats. I could probably count on one hand the number that are large enough to have berths for more than one or two people. 

It appears that Ships use small sail boats, though they do occasionally have access to larger sail boats, but certainly not what most people would call Yachts and absolutely not tall ships. 

The youth are pretty much average youth, who would, if not for Scouting, not have access to sail boats. They also try to send a few youth to Sea Base every year for the Sailing experience.