NCAC Wardroom Dinner and Award Ceremony

by Sarah

Last Saturday, February 28th, was the National Capital Area Council Dinner and award ceremony. Ship 1942 very kindly invited us to take part in the ceremony as practice for the Regional Bridge of Honor we are performing in New Jersey later this month. Five of our scouts, Rebecca, Caitlín, Jared, Gus, and I made the port crew, and Ship 1942 had seven scouts as the starboard crew, boatswain, and boatswain’s mate. Also, our very own skipper was the mate. She looked great in her new dress uniform.

When we all got there, we started by rolling our new neckerchiefs. The Sea Cadets had showed us how to roll them when they came to teach us military drill, and thanks to their help, we were able to roll five neckerchiefs very quickly.

Skipper Ballew of Ship 1942 ran us and his scouts through the ceremony twice. The first time he explained every person’s jobs for their position. For example, the mate and boatswain board at opposite sides of the vessel at the same time, the crew leader requests permission for his/her crew to board, etc. Then we went through it for a second time as if it was the real ceremony and not just a practice round.

Next, Skipper Ballew introduced the guest speaker Alex Smith and his daughter Francis. Mr. Smith said he would be talking about submarines and some people who make submarines by themselves. He then invited us outside to look at his submarine made for only one person. It seemed very small with no room to lie down inside of it, but he later explained that he does not use it for longer than a short day trip with some other submariners.

Dinner consisted of the choice between roast beef, baked chicken, or vegetarian lasagna and green beans, boiled potatoes, and a bread roll. After we ate, the landship ceremony began, and the awards were handed out. We were hoping to receive ship of the year, but that reward was given to Ship 1942. The surprise was the Skipper of the Year award that was presented to Skipper Shay. It was a pleasant surprise for the skipper; she was hoping for the ship of the year and was shocked to hear her name announced as Skipper of the Year.

The ceremony concluded, and the guest speaker began to set up for his slide show he was going to use as part of his speech. While he set up his projector, Skipper Shay grabbed us five scouts, and we stepped back onto the landship. She had surprise certificates for a couple people who have helped our ship get off the ground. The first one was for Commodore Yeckley who received the “Amanda Grace award” because he kept the Amanda Grace at his house until we were able to get a slip for her close by. He also chased her down when she slipped her anchor. The other certificate went to Commodore Alexander for his help with our ship and his generosity with the use of his ship the der PeliKan.

Lastly, Alex Smith began his speech. He first showed us a short video of him in his submarine going underwater along with a convention of other submariners. His picture slideshow showed several different people who build submarines on their own. Two of them had, at one point, taken place as the smallest submarine in the Guinness World Records. Another man was making a huge submarine from scratch, a submarine that he could live up to three weeks in. Also in his slideshow was Sea Scout Ship 188th in Montreal that had previously restored old boats and sold them, but they were now restoring an old submarine. They had taken it apart and started to clean it though there was still a lot left. Mr. Smith said he is interested in seeing how it turns out when they finally finish it.

It was a very enjoyable event, and we will most likely attend next year.

Winter Training 2009

by Caitlín This past weekend Sea Scout Ship 7916 had very large turnout for the annual Winter Training event held at Catoctin Mountain Park in Thurmont, MD.
Most of our caravan left the commuter outside of Occoquan at 5:00 p.m., and arrived at Catoctin around 8:30. After we checked in, the Skipper held a muster in the mess hall, then she and I attended a meeting for all the Skippers and Boatswains who were attending the weekend.

Friday night is basically for checking in, so we went back to our cabins (the males from our Ship got a whole cabin to themselves, while we females shared with three other Ships) and settled in. Three girls from Ship 90 (S.S.S. North Star) invited us to play "BS" with them before bed, then it was time for lights out.

Saturday

Six-thirty a.m. comes early when you fall asleep on a cot in an unfamiliar place and mostly doze. None of us Scouts were ready to get up and dressed, but we had to in order get breakfast in time. Before we left, all our sleeping gear needed to be cleaned up so that the area could be used as a classroom during the day. We managed not to fall asleep over our waffles and sausage and arrive at classes in time--and all in proper uniform, even.

My first class lasted for two sessions and was taught by the Skipper of Ship 198, where I learned how to play a boatswain's call, not a pipe. Pipes are what one plays on a call. The information sheet that the teacher gave out with the durations of the pipes was worth it alone, but the whole class was one of the best I attended for the weekend.

The next two periods were, for Gus, the Skipper, and myself taken up by Commodore Steve Alexander's SPAM (Sea-Scout Prepared Afloat Meals) class. The Skipper took a lot of notes throughout, so that we will have a better time planning for our next weekend or long cruise.
The Commodore really did show us how to cook SPAM® and biscuits (left), and then held a PB&J making contest.
Those participating didn't do too well with that, making only eight sandwiches in the allotted time, which was several sandwiches below the record.

When the class ended it was time to pipe the mess call (not literally), and our Ship met up in the mess hall for meatball subs, which was a premiering meal. I think it was a success, and everyone (except for Gus, who gave me his) really liked dessert, which was banana pudding that Rebecca had helped make earlier in the day.

After lunch we had a group photo shoot of all the Scouts in uniform (first picture). To show our uniforms, we had to take our coats off even in the freezing cold weather. The second we were able to, we raced to where we'd thrown our coats on the ground and hurried back into them.

The afternoon classroom periods had fewer things of interest for our Ship, but Sarah and I attended a class on capsize recovery, which I'm sure will be useful--especially when we sail small boats.

Then we returned to the mess hall and played Nertz, a card game that has been described very well as "full contact team solitaire." A few families in the Ship know how to play, and it's growing evermore popular with the Scouts. At first it was just Sarah, her dad, me, and Gus, but later on more people joined in. Having played a similar game with friends for years, I caught on very quickly and Caleb--who is also very good--and I are now banned from being on the same team because we were "spanking" everyone else so bad.

Our game was interrupted by the call for a dinner of "cowboy stew," a hamburger-macaroni-corn dish that reminded me greatly of the meal we managed to cook while sailing Amanda Grace home. This was also a debuting meal, but it wasn't nearly as much of a hit as lunch had been.

Dinner was cleared and it was time to get ready for the dance--that is, if you weren't a boatswain or adult leader, both of whom had meetings to attend. I actually missed all but five minutes of the boatswain's meeting, because I either read the schedule wrong or it listed the time incorrectly. ...And because I was distracted by playing Nertz with everyone.

At least, because I caught the very end of the boatswain's meeting, I heard about the National Capital Area Council (NCAC) meeting where the new NCAC youth officers would be elected, so I went to round up everyone from my Ship, although not all of them made it (maybe we'll have to ban Nertz altogether).

Those of us who did attend the meeting helped elect the NCAC Boatswain, Boatswain's Mate, and Yeoman, the latter for which retiring NCAC Boatswain Andrew Scheuermann nominated me. I said, "hold on, how can you nominate me if you can't even remember my name? And I decline the nomination, anyway." I might be ready next year (although being Yeoman for our Ship was very tedious, and I can't imagine this being any less so), but right now I'm working on running meetings as Boatswain of our Ship.
Fortunately there were several other candidates and enough to fill the elected seats. (The new Boatswain, Boatswain's Mate, Yeoman, and former Boatswain, right.)

Then it was time for the dance, at least for people outside of our Ship. Very few of us were interested in going, for one reason or another, so we hung out next door in the conference room and talked with members of Ship 1115, paid some attention to the movies that were showing, and played cards until the pizza came. Rebecca had her quotebook out again and took down more hilarious (and sometimes incriminating) quotes from everyone--with Sarah's help, while Gus sopped up the lemonade leaking from the cooler with his feet (left).

A while later it was time to turn in, which I did gladly because I was getting very tired by lights-out.

Sunday

There is something very nice about having for the second seating at meals: those of us who are still extremely tired don't have to jump out of bed the second the alarm goes off. But we did need to clean up all our things and pack them into the cars so we'd be ready when it was time to leave, so Sarah, Rebecca, and I forced ourselves to get up.

Our first class sessions were taken up by a private landship practice session (right) from Skipper Kaine and Commodore Yeckley, because the Commodore offered our Ship the extreme honor of conducting the landship ceremony at the Northeast Region Bridge of Honor and Sea Scout Ball held in Bridgeport, New Jersey at the end of March.

Since our Ship has only really conducted one landship ceremony before--and a very informal one at that--we need a lot of practice if we're going to be able to pull it off and look sharp. My piping lessons from the day before came in handy for the commands, but I'll still need to practice if we want to include the use of a bo'sun's call.

It would be a lot of work, but I think if we really want to, we can get things together in time to pull it off. All the Scouts who participated in the practice session seemed to like it well enough, but we'd need more Scouts to commit, since there will have to be eight sideboys, plus other positions like Boatswain, Boatswain's Mate, and Crew Leaders.

We helped Skipper Yeckley pack up the landship supplies, then played more Nertz until lunchtime. Our Ship had kitchen and mess hall cleanup duty, so we got started that almost before the meal was over. Except there was one problem; few of the Scouts knew how to sweep or swab ("mop" to lubbers) very well at all. After they went over the entire floor and it was still visibly dirty, they received a personal lesson on swabbing from Commodore Alexander (left).

Eventually the mess hall was in acceptable shape and we could leave. I think everyone had a good time, learned a lot, and met a some new people.

Nygard Regatta

by Caitlín

Today two Scouts from Ship 7916 attended the annual Henry I. Nygard Regatta for the first time to see what it was like and report back to the rest of the Scouts so we can determine whether it is something we want to do next year.
Right photo: Hauling a up the Boatswain's Chairlift.

Skipper Shay, David, and I set our alarms for the dreadful hour of 4:45 a.m. and had to leave the commuter lot by 6:00 in order to arrive at Camp Brown by the time the event began. It was beautiful out, but driving for a little over two hours straight still wasn't fun--especially that early when we were all wishing we could be back in bed.

Once we had found the camp and stretched, we went into the mess hall to get oriented, find out which competitions were being held today, and use the head. We found out from Mr. David of Ship 1176 that no competitive events were scheduled until 1:00 p.m., so we had a lot of waiting to do. We should have looked at the boarding manual more carefully!
Below: A crew from Ship 1942 practices their rowing.

On the deck outside the mess hall we stood overlooking the Chesapeake and watching the boats go by. There were several sailboats out, as well as a lot of powerboats, and we were wishing we could be sailing. Ship 1942 (S.S.S. Dragonlady) has one of their boats only 30 minutes from Camp Brown, and a few members half-seriously said they should go jump aboard.

Various Skippers came up to say hello, and urged David and I to go mingle with the other youth, but neither of us felt up to it. Instead the two of us sat outside and talked about nothing of importance. Eventually my mom came over and made us get up and take pictures of things that were going on.

But since there wasn't anything besides a church service, the three of us ended up standing by the car and talking instead. I think my mom managed to thoroughly weird David out during that time. By 10:00 David had convinced us that we should go back into town and try and find a movie theater to watch either Indiana Jones or Prince Caspian just for something to do.
Right photo: Scouts practice their Scuttlebutt skills, raising a fifty-five gallon drum. Only the Coxswain is allowed to speak.

So we drove quite a ways down Route 5 before realizing that Scotland and the surrounding towns were too small to have any theaters. Instead of going to the movies, we stopped at a local grocery store and bought some snacks and a couple soft drinks to go with our lunch. More time to kill back at camp, and then lunch. David and I sat at a picnic table and watched the boats sail by just out of reach.

The competitions finally began at 1:00, so I took pictures of the knot-tying contest (which David, being David, was sure he could win easily) and the boatswain's chairlift. No one was participating in the scuttlebutt at that time, but I'd gotten a couple shots of one team practicing earlier in the day. After that we were all ready to go home, so we left.
Left: A team of knot-tiers leap into action. This activity is judged on speed and accuracy.

I think that the Regatta might be something fun to go to next year if our Ship is good enough to compete in at least a couple things, but I don't know if I would want to spend the entire weekend there. I'm sure the event would be a lot more fun if me and the other Scouts actually socialized with people, but David and I were both feeling shy this time.
At right: Ship 548 (S.S.S. Sea Eagle) had its own Advanced Life Support vehicle decorated with team spirit!

First Award!

Tonight I attended the NCAC Wardroom annual Sea Scout Dinner at American Legion Post 177 in Fairfax. Being that I was the only representative of Ship 7916, and people were seated by Ship number, I was invited to sit with the folks from 1176, since one of them is on our Ship's committee, and they had invited us for the October der PeLiKan sail. It had been a long week, I was bone tired, the MC was announcing award after award by Ship number, and I was almost nodding off when I heard a voice next to me say, "Congratulations!" Oh! Oh! They said our number, they said "Ship 7916." Just a few months after our chartering, we won the Wardroom Award for our level of activity and accomplishments. Wow!