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Local Troop Prepares for International Sailing Expedition
By Neale Batra
ANN ARBOR – Venturing Crew 8, an extension of Boy Scout Troop 8, is gearing up for a three-and-a-half weeklong expedition in the Windward Islands of the southern Caribbean this summer.
The crew, which is based out of St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Ann Arbor, is known to be one of the particularly extreme outdoor groups of the area for youth. They entertains a packed pre-trip calendar in preparation for one of its two yearly high-adventure expeditions. The group does a 10-day trip in the winter and a three-four week expedition during the summer.
While there, the crew plans on meeting several Scout troops in Grenada, San Juan, and any other countries they can make contact with. Other than meeting people, they plan to hike and climb up several peaks, all of which are volcanic, explore other parts of the islands, find several GeoCaches, get to know the mixed culture of the area, and most of all, become better at sailing.
The crew has been preparing since last fall to reach the skill level of the American Sailing Association levels up to 105. That basically means being able to “skipper” a boat individually and react to moderate to bad weather. Once on the trip, with the help of “remote” adult Ian Darnell who lives in the San Francisco area, they plan to learn up to level 106 and 107. Those include learning long nighttime passage making and astronomical navigation.
“We’ve got some big goals, but the question will be whether we can commit the time and effort to reach them.” Trip Leader Neale Batra says. “If we do reach the goals, this will be a very cool trip, if we don’t but in the effort, it won’t turn out so great.”
The Pre-trip schedule for this expedition is extensive. In preperation for the trip the scouts have gone through a rugged 9-day first aid course led by the scouters, it is approximately equivalent to an EMT course. They have also spent many days at the U-M Sail Club during the fall, they are going through many meetings to gain the on-land skill set necessary to go out on the water, and they will have nine days of sailing experience before departing for St. Vincent.
The group recently spent Memorial Day weekend in Cleveland sailing with some friends of one of the adults, they took part in three opening races for the Cleveland Yacht Club (CYC) and sailed on boats ranging from 21’ to 36’.
But there have been some problems with the workload for the scouts, “Although it’s turning out to be an awesome trip, I didn’t really know all the time and work and effort that would be necessary before I committed to the trip. It’s become really hard to keep up with school and everything else.” trip member Seth Dawson comments. There have been several heated discussions among the group and the schedule has been re-arranged several times.
Venture Crew 8 closely follows the outdoor education curriculum of the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS). The group includes several NOLS graduates as well as Bob Geier, an old NOLS instructor. The members learn core outdoor skills and become competent performers in many extreme sports.
Some previous expeditions include white-water kayaking class III-IV rivers in Pennsylvania, back-country skiing in the Holy Cross wilderness of Colorado, ice-climbing in the UP, mountaineering in the Wind River Range of Wyoming, and rock climbing in Red Rocks Canyon, NV.
The crew’s biggest expedition so far has been a 2001 trip to summit Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. In Tanzania and Kenya the group backpacked in the mountains, went on a safari, and took a remote and glacier-full route up to the summit of Africa’s tallest peak. The group also brought back many tens of bags of trash off the mountain.
The other international trip the crew has done was during the summer of 2003 when they biked across Denmark, sea kayaked, and made good friends with many Danish scout groups.
Dawson, who went on the Denmark biking expedition comments that “Going on an international trip compared to a continental U.S. trip is a lot cooler because you get to experience the different cultures and languages. Spending time with people our age in Denmark was really valuable, and an experience I’ll never forget.”
The trips that the crew does are kid-organized, the “trip leader” organize the preparations or “pre-trip” schedule, works through the Time Control Plan (TCP) of the trip, and deals with logistics and group dynamics with as little adult interference as possible.
Bob quote about the adult roleThe three adults and many other alumni of the troop did an exploratory trip in preparation for the longer trip this summer. The adults wanted to have an alumni trip to get together some of the crew’s recently graduated members and seized the opportunity to create a trip with a double role. They traveled in only about one-third of the area that the actual trip will take place in, and stayed less than two weeks.
As for looking into the future, the crew is working on a backcountry skiing trip in Colorado over winter break next year. As for after that, some rumors of a white-water kayaking trip have been circulating, but nothing is for certain.
Seth says “I personally would like to do another biking trip somewhere in Europe in the future. But I’ll go with whatever the crew decides on.”
If you would like more information about Venture Crew 8, visit www.troop8.org/venture
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