Today was all about celebrating as a way to close 2016 of Bravo Team classes until our next class on January 5th 2017.  Time flies when you’re having fun.

On the agenda today was for the group to make decisions about which environmental project we want to put energy into in the New Year… We asked students to pair up and discuss within their teams of two: 1) What ideas inspire you and are of interest? 2) What needs does this idea fill? 3) What are the next steps?  Each team was able to come up to the front of the class and give a quick persuasive speech about why they chose one particular idea.  Leadership and teamwork skills were present in these ‘mini speeches’-some of them were on the side of comedic!  (Team members sharing below are Hunter and Luca…)

Persuasive speech time with the ‘talking lei’

After this we voted with our top two choices (first vote gets two tallies, second vote gets one tally).  After tallying the votes we had a tie between building nesting boxes, and a water bottle filling station.  Stay tuned in the New Year about upcoming events and information on how to support these projects!

The official tally, witnessed and counted 3 times!

After all that ‘business’ it was time to head upstairs and play in the Pilothouse Simulator and Chart Room.  We split into groups and had a chance to run 3 simulations in Agate Pass, Port Townsend Bay, and Elliot Bay with a MOB and a rescue to an awaiting helicopter.  The weather and wind changed frequently and the teams worked together to keep their boats from running aground.

Now it was party time!  We had a gallery table for our Totem Animal projects as well as a table for treats!  Some of the totem projects displayed: Peregrine Falcon, Barn Owl, Beaver, Black Bear, Rough Skinned Newt, White Tailed Deer, and Anenome.

We finished this celebratory day with some good ‘ol Mallory Family Fun Game.  If you haven’t played you don’t know what you’re missing out on.  If you have played you can understand why we were sad that class had to come to an end!  It is part password, part charades, and general shenanigans as we try to get teammates to guess maritime and natural history based clues that we write ourselves and throw into a hat.

To close class (and our year together) we shared high tides of the year from Bravo Team.  Some ideas shared were: seeing animals in the wild, being on the water, playing games, sailing with the wind and feeling the longboat go, acting and being funny, that we have such a good team, climbing trees, simulator time, putting on exposure suits, and being together.

Thanks for following along with us here and HAPPY NEW YEAR!