Planning Day

Chrissy McLeanAll, Bravo Team, Uncategorized, Youth Programs

It was a windy day in Port Townsend Bay and Bravo Team was held ashore. Our COI (Certificate of Inspection) states that we aren’t able to head out in over 18 knots of wind or when a Small Craft Advisory is posted. Both of those things were true today, plus we all agreed it generally wasn’t very pleasant boating weather.

We started the day with some team building exercises including the Step In Circle. This challenge asks the group to get everyone touching an object in the center of the circle with a few simple rules: no talking, no moving at the same time as another person, and people next to each other cannot move before or after each other. The group had 3 minutes to come up with a strategy and then they were off. They had to restart the challenge several times until they got it right. In our debrief we discussed how people used leadership, followership, non-verbal communication, planning, and flexibility to get the task done. We also shared ways that these traits would also make us a strong longboat team.

Back in class we made a list of all of the skills we need to learn or practice before we head out on our overnight journey in May. We came up with a pretty long list! Everyone voted on their top three skills and the winners were: knowing rowing commands, navigation and route planning, and meal planning. We also want to work on natural history, creating a Ship’s Article (group contract), and sailing.

After a snack, we headed outside. The wind had veered significantly by that time which made our beach walk much more pleasant. We headed out to our local beach with a goal of seeing how much plastic trash was there and whether we could make art from that beach plastic. We are working on a service project day and have some ideas about using beach plastic for an art project. More on that in a few weeks!

Back in class we spent a few minutes either working on our tasks for our service project or starting research on a Salish Sea marine animal. We learned that some animals, like our local humpback whales, are increasing in population. It was nice to have some hopeful news.

Our reflection focused on other hopeful things that were happening in our lives. We shared a few: gaining self-confidence, improving at dance, earning money as a voice actor, growing as a writer, becoming an actor, spring coming, and healing from a broken wrist.