Although elementary and high school students in Lunenburg started school a couple of weeks ago, today is the first day of school for another group of students in Lunenburg. Picton Castle’s Bosun School begins today and we have a group of eager students ready to sharpen both their pencils and their knives.
The Bosun School is designed for young mariners who want to build their seamanship skills in a focused environment. As Captain Daniel Moreland, head instructor of the Bosun School, likes to say, emergency training is good to have, but it’s better to have training in skills that prevent emergencies from happening in the first place, and those skills are seamanship skills.
In order to attend Bosun School, students must have already spent some time at sea standing watches and participating in operating the vessel. By doing that, they already know that they like seafaring and they want to continue to do it. They also know about group living and that everyone must pitch in and do their part.
After an orientation with Captain Moreland this morning, the students dove into rope work. They started with cutting rope, then whipping the rope ends, tying knots, and splicing the rope together in different ways. For all of them, some parts of this was a review, but it’s good to start with the basics to be sure that everyone has a solid foundation on which to build.
We’re expecting wet weather here for the next few days so we’ll mostly be in the workshop, but we’re hoping to get small boats ready to launch later this week so the students can start practicing small boat handling under sail, oar and power.
