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!