It’s the season for small craft advisories with strong wind and rain! We started our day ashore with team building activities that helped us to incorporate 2 new team members. We played a game of blindfolded tag that brought out the need for clear and calm communication when working together.  The game was a great lead-in to our next activity which was discussing our ship’s articles.

Ship’s articles historically were agreements sailors were required to sign before working aboard a tall ship. They were made up by the Captain and there was punishment for not following them. Today we do this process more democratically.  We spent time individually writing about what we think makes a good team and things that we want to learn about. Our goal is to use this information to create a ship’s articles flag during a future class that we all sign and fly from the mast when we go boating.

We plan to do an environmental service project this year. We did some brainstorming about Salish Sea issues and environmental projects we are interested in. Some of the ideas that came up were salmon habitat restoration, creating educational materials around issues, and doing beach clean ups. We will work on this more after the winter break.

Next, we got outside and experienced the weather during a “Dock Walk”. Students worked in teams to check on the boats at the dock, making sure dock lines and fenders were well secured. We got invigorated by the wind and rain and were happy to come back inside for our holiday party.

We enjoyed holiday music, treats and fun game called Mallory Family Fun. When we come back from holiday break we’ll begin maintenance on the Townshend in the boat shop starting Jan. 9!