Learning the Rules of the Road

by Caitlín

Lacey Villiva from Ship 1176 in Springfield came to Occoquan today to teach a Rules of the Road class. Lacey needed to teach the class to meet her final requirement for the rank of Quartermaster, and we needed the class for advancement. We invited members of the newly-formed Ship 1115, also in Springfield, to join us for the course as well.

With five 7916 Scouts and six from 1115--along with several adult leaders--we had a good sized class, although we Scouts were a little unresponsive to Lacey's questions. Lacey used little movable paper boats to demonstrate which boat was the stand-on vessel and which was the give-way in different situations, and circles of colored paper to show navigation light combinations. I think the signal we all learned fastest was for an unmanned vessel, easy to remember by the rhyme "Red over red, the captain's dead."

To conclude, we did some practical demonstrations of rights-of-way. Rebecca and I began by portraying two power boats in a crossing situation (we failed on the first try). Everybody got a turn navigating the VFW hall floor while representing sailboats on various tacks, a tug pushing a barge, and other vessels.

The class was beneficial in many ways; Lacey meeting her final Quartermaster requirement, everyone probably learned at least one new thing, we got to meet the Scouts from Ship 1115, and the 1115 adult leaders networked with ours.

Thank you very much, Lacey!

Our First Advancement Ceremony

Seven of our scouts advanced to Apprentice rank during a ceremony they organized. Our ship's flag happened to arrive the day before, just in time to be included.

Our teens learned and accomplished a lot in preparing to be Sea Scout Ship 7916's first Apprentice scouts. I reminded them that they are young, capable, intelligent people who are not in school right now, and appointed the lot of them to the ad hoc committee for advancement. They were allowed to create whatever they wanted, so long as it is within BSA and Sea Scout guidelines.

Mark created beautiful certificates; Aaron selected music to play on his iPod and his family provided a chocolate cake with cream cheese icing; Sarah brought cups and drinks; and David came up with a landship ceremony.

Given the level of advance communication (it was sketchy), I was pleasantly surprised by how well the scouts pulled together our premiere advancement ceremony. By the time I arrived, they had the chairs, table, and landship set up, and my heart did a little happy dance when I saw them rehearsing from across the room. The scouts' individual contributions and collective creation showed that they took the event with due seriousness. As I have said, they have done me proud before, and they did so again tonight. They showed me that I am not crazy for doing this thing that has taken over my life, reminded me that they are the reason. I am looking forward to seeing how they will use this experience to make things happen even better in future.