sailingpj

Really? Only two pull ups? I saw a couple cub scouts at the Jamboree doing 3-5 pull ups.

No no no, the rest of the world just needs to follow in behind the US with the MMDDYY format, also the Imperial system too. Do away with all those other logical date formats and counting systems.

The space blanket was one of the suggested thing to wrap around the staff, along with navigational charts, tin foil, surgical tape, velcro, 10'x10' plastic tarp, writing paper, surgical tubing and sandpaper. Fishing line and parachute cord is one thing, all (or any) of that other stuff is a little much I think.

If you put matches in you staff then you may not even need to gather wood.

How about this, add Instruct, and Reference. That makes it EDGIER. Explain/Excite (you need to get the student excited about what they are learning) Demonstrate Guide Instruct Enable/excite more Reference Then just say that these steps can be combined and rearranged to meet the needs of the student and teacher.

Lisabob, thank you for reminding me, I need to pick up some flour. I am making a peach pie for a party next weekend. I make a very good peach pie, completely from scratch.

1 is taken care of with proper ventilation. 2 and 4 are taken care of if you also whip the end and just lightly melt the line. Often people keep the heat on for too long, that is what gives the ugliness and sharp end. I also just kinda flatten the end out while the line is still in a little bit of a liquid state. That really cuts down on any sharpness. I have no rebuttal to 3, it is very true. Oh, one other thing. If the end of the line is in the position to be slashing away at anything then there are other problems that need to be taken care of first. As they say, everytime that sail luffs back and forth is is a dollar. Not each time it starts luffing, each individual swing back and forth while luffing.

Eagle92, yours sound alright, I am thinking of the wrapping the thing in space blankets and that other stuff. It sounds a little much to me.

Now this is very new: "Write a 500-word report on a marine endangered species (mammal, bird, fish, or reptile). The report should include a description of the species, its habitat, history, current population numbers, and current steps being employed to help its recovery."

I can't even imagine a hiking staff with half that stuff on it. That would look very strange. I think it would be easier to stick it all in a back pack and carry that. There just comes to be a point when you are trying to do to many things with one item. I like jblake47's description, the staff is used for walking, and as stretcher parts, and as a flag pole. Nothing more. That makes sense to me. Wouldn't a staff with all that stuff on it, or even just a fraction of it, be kinda unwieldy?

‎"Then the parent becomes the cockroach that the child will squash dead." I think my mother and I have been trading blows with hammers of ever increasing size for the past few years. Metaphorically speaking of course, I would never hit my mother.

Yeah, Keith Christopher came and held a Boatswains meeting at the Safety at Sea event in San Francisco last year. He asked for our thoughts on revisions to the manual, and other suggestions for what they at National could do to help us do our jobs better. At that point we were told that there was going to be an online copy of the manual, and that it was coming out in the spring. That was one year ago this weekend. I think we just misunderstood which spring.

Beavah, your circular thing is kinda like what I learned. I learned to teach useing an ever increasing spiral upwards. Each loop of the circle has all the explanations and demonstrations and enabling needed for the skill to be taught, but instead of a circle it is a spiral because each piece of knowledge, or skill is built on the ones before it.

Speaking of maintaining standards, I noticed that they changed the requirements that are on the seascout.org site. They are now different than the ones in the manual I have. I wonder if that has something to do with the new manual that has been due out for a while. The requirements have been reorganized. Some are a bit harder, some are easier, some just different. One that I am glad of is moving the overhand knot from Ordinary to Apprentice. They also moved the requirement to chair a major activity to ordinary. It was an optional Able requirement before. Actually, most of the requirements are somewhat harder. A couple are slightly easier, but most have been expanded. It looks like about ~50% of the requirements have been changed, and only like ~10% of those are easier.

Okay, I was just wondering.

I always learned to both whip and fuse the end of the line. The trick is to get some good waxed thread though. The wax melts and the thread shrinks a tad and just cinches down on the line. Then the wax hardens into a nice shell around the whipping, plus some of the wax leaks into the line and helps keep the whipping from slipping off the end. Then when you fuse it you don't want that black charred mass on the end of the line, it looks bad and sometimes makes the line difficult to stick through a block. You want the end to be a nice light brown, about the color of a perfect marshmallow. btw, not to put down your rigger, but I have known plenty of riggers that consider it standard practice to fuse the end of a line. As for the requirements, I don't know them but common sense says that a match, lighter, or candle is okay to use without a bunch of training. If you are that worried about it use those matches you can strike anywhere and hand the box to the responsible scout teaching with the suggestion that he only hand out one at a time.

"Of course, there's nothing that says we can't have one more, eh? Why not post your question and let folks respond? Beavah" This is one of the biggest reasons I like this forum, you all are willing to answer a question time and time again. There are some forums where nobody posts questions anymore because they are just going to get a dozen replies telling them to use the search function. So, I thank and applaud all of you who are here answering questions and disseminating information all the time. I hereby present you all with one GIANT e-pie(the great thing about an e-pie is you get to decide your own filling!).

Ummm... Troop24, you said that there are three licenses available, then only posted two.

Well, that was a very informative post. I think I learned more there than in two months reading this forum. None of the ships I have been with have pushed for youth involvement outside the unit (not counting attending regattas), so almost everything I know about the BSA and its history is from here. From what you say I can definitely see where the argument is coming from. That doesn't mean I don't think that it is still a kinda silly argument, but I can see where the worries are coming from.

You Beavah, mystery is good, but science fiction is even better. ;D Not that star wars Sci-Fi junk, but real Science Fiction.

Moosetracker, correct me if I am wrong, but you seem to think that a college student cannot do well without their parents bugging them all the time. At least that is what I am getting from your comment in response to packsaddle's of his children: "So how was the sleeping arrangement under the bed in the dorm room?.. " If that is true then I am fully prepared to get extremely offended.

A couple things, first off I did not start off writing that post with that direction in mind. I'm not quite sure how I ended up where I did. Moosetracker, I chose not to post in that thread because of how far it has gone from the original post. I said my peice there already and that is what I have to say. I try to avoid getting caught up in debate unless I have the time to actually think about the subject. emb, I guess I learned something new today, on two counts. I have never actually read the requirements for Eagle, everybody just say that they are approximately equivilant. That is all for now, I have more, but I am late for a chem class.

I was reading the previous thread and got to thinking, you guys on the Boy Scout end of things have a really nice problem. You are arguing over whether one person's achievement of Eagle is better than another person's. From what I have seen we don't have that problem in the Sea Scouts. Our problem is staying afloat, both literally and figuratively. It takes a lot of time to maintain a boat, and that time grows exponentially with the size of the boat. The Sea Scout program itself is struggling to survive. Over the past couple years I have heard a few different numbers tossed out from various people. All of them are pretty close together actually. Apparently there are between 7,000 and 10,000 registered Sea Scouts in the country. I mention this just to throw some perspective on the previous argument, and some other arguments that I have seen recently. Not to offend anybody, but some of the arguments are kinda ludicrous. Arguing over whether a 14 year old's achievement of Eagle is worth more or less than that of an 18 year old. Don't forget, that 14 year old may have had up to 3 1/2 years to work on that achievement. Let me tell you, that is a really long time to a 14 year old. That is more that 1/4 his total life. Then that argument over whether a troop that turns out 20 eagles a year is better or worse than the troop that turns out 2. There are many many reasons for that to be. In the Sea Scout between 40 and 50 people achieve Quartermaster each year. That is it for the entire country. We would love to have your problem of deciding who worked harder, or whose achievement is better. I am on track to finish my Quartermaster when I am 19. That will be approximately 3 1/2 years after I joined Sea Scouts. That puts it about on par with your 14 year old Eagle. Does that mean that my ship is a Quartermaster Mill? Does that mean that my mother is pushing me to get it? Because let me tell you, there could be nothing further from the truth. I work on my personal advancement on my own personal time, not on the ships time. I just joined my 4th ship (I move a lot), none of them pushed advancement at all. As for my mother, she thinks it is a waste of my time. Do not forget that even if he had many people pushing him to get it done; that 14 year old Eagle had to jump through exactly the same hoops as any other Eagle Scout.

LOL, that totally just made my day.

That is soooo cool, and cute, and totally awesome!!!