Thanksgiving and Winter News

I hope everyone had a fun and safe Thanksgiving weekend. I've been hearing rumors about the winter season staff for 2011/2012 and they are going to be great. All returning Mates with lots of combined experience and incredible energy. If you are coming down to spend your vacation in the Keys with them, you're surely in for a treat.

Look forward to a few posts about what you should be bringing to the Brinton Center for your adventure and other information.

New Wilderness First Aid Requirement

If anyone checked out the link to Capt. Willis' blog, Florida Sea Base News, they would have seen that there are new requirements for medical forms and Wilderness First Aid for the 2012 and 2013 seasons, respectively. As of January 1st, 2012, the Florida Sea Base will require a newer, longer medical form for certain programs (mainly scuba). In addition, after January 1st, 2013, there is a new requirement that all staff and one adult leader from each crew attending Sea Base must be Wilderness First Aid certified. I was having a hard time finding an organization that taught WFA courses and didn't look sketchy and like they might steal my money or give me an unsatisfactory education. Personally, I don't mess around and look for the "cheap" option when it comes to CPR/first aid courses. I jumped to the Red Cross site but was having a lot of trouble finding if they actually give the WFA courses or just approved them. When I had all but given up I found the Wilderness Medicine Institute's website (part of NOLS, the National Outdoor Leadership School) and was given direct, informative, fair information on what exactly I was getting. I signed up 2 minutes after finding their page.
NOLS is a leader in outdoor education and their Wilderness Medicine Institute is second to none. Here is the link to the home page about the course: Wilderness First Aid at the WMI/NOLS
And if you like what you read, click the yellow "DATES & LOCATIONS" box under the title and find your state and locations near you easily. Good luck and get trained!

MUNSON!

The Lottery is Over, Your Time Has Come!

According to the official Sea Base website the lottery for 2012 is now over with the "winners" having been notified already. Given that the program season is about to begin with Winter season only a month and a half away, I'm going to try to get back into the swing of posting here about the Brinton Environmental Center, Sea Base in general, traveling to Summerland Key, things to bring for your adventure, what you can expect, and recreation opportunities for before and after your adventure. There are also some very useful skills that the Mates and Captains are always, literally, ecstatic about when a crew shows up and is already familiar with them. I'll be going into detail on those eventually as well.
Another excellent blog (and the model for this particular one) is that of Capt. Steve Willis called Florida Sea Base News. Definitely check it out if you are staff, alumni, looking to get a work at the FSB, or are a participant at one of the Islamorada bases programs.
I also run a personal blog I call Chasing Breezes. It's quite a mish-mash of topics right now, but as I get free time and the weather gets worse I'll be posting more about my experiences in scientific research, sailing, knots, things I find interesting, and probably a lot of things you won't find interesting. I hope you check it out though and feel free to click some of the ads to help me pay for hosting for this site eventually as well as my tuition so I can go on to do great things and not worry (too much) about my debt from school.

It's a Big Blue Ocean out there, come enjoy it with us!

New Rotations and Good Vibrations

It's my first real day off at the BEC this summer so I thought I'd try to make a post and get back into the groove. Things at the base are running real well. Most mates are reporting solid first crews and two or three rotations have made it to their second crews of the summer. Here at the BEC, crews arrive on alternating days between Out Island and Keys Adventure/Fishing Adventure. For example, it could be a monday and 5 OI crews might arrive and then on Tuesday 3 KA crews (and possibly 2 FA crews) would show up. From what I've heard around base, this will be the case for the rest of the summer with the few exceptions of a rotation of 6 OI crews showing up every now and then.
Almost every rotation of mates has or is going to be switched up for their second rotation. This gives us all a chance to work with different staff members than we would otherwise. Last year I worked with the same 4 mates for the entire summer, save my last week when one mate left for the summer and was replaced in the rotation. Luckily we 5 mates worked well together and the participants for our rotation gained from our mutual experiences, cooperation, and streamlining of the program.

The weather has been generally comfortable if a bit windy for the past two weeks. It has laid down a little bit today which afforded the KA crews a chance to do some early morning kayaking to look at an old shrimp processing facility and explore the backcountry for a few hours. As far as the future, we expect the wind to calm down to normal conditions soon and give us a chance to really do some fishing on the short Duskys for the OI and KA fishing days.
There's a disturbance in between Central America and Jamaica that many forecasters are keeping an eye on. There shouldn't be any news for a week or so when a tropical wave enters that area of the ocean. If your crew is coming down during that time period or in the weeks after, keep an eye on the Weather Underground and specifically Dr. Jeff Master's blog for more information.

Memorial Day and First Crew

Today was my first full day on base and also the day I picked up my first crew of the summer, a triple from Nebraska. I believe there is one other KA/FA (Keys Adventure/Fishing Adventure) rotation, five crews total, out and about along with two OI (Out Island) rotations on the island. Lots of staff are still on pforce, our name for routine base maintenance tasks like weedwhacking, washing boats and vans, and other repair jobs. A few mates are on the island finishing the construction of campsites, composting toilet systems, and floating docks to make sure the participants have a successful and interruption free time when they get here. It was great finally getting to see just about all of the returning mates and captains from last year and I can't wait to meet the rest of the new staff members this summer.
Tomorrow my KA rotation will be heading into Key West after doing some early morning swim checks and we'll be back later that night after visiting the Sunset Festival.

The weather has been quite windy lately from what I hear and today was no exception. The offshore bite seemed to be there from the fishing reports I heard, but it was a chore getting out there for our Dusky captains. Several war canoes swamped near Big Munson Island but were able to safely shove anchor and there was a Dusky or two near to lend assistance in towing them to the beach of Little Palm where all were able to bail themselves, relash a hull if needed, and make their way to Munson safe and sound. This is high adventure, and some crews are sure getting their money's worth this week.

First Post

Every blog has got to have one. A first post. I just wanted to introduce myself as the sole author of the blog and set the tone for what a reader such as yourself could expect to find here. First, the Brinton Environmental Center (Brinton Center, BEC, Summerland Base) is a high-adventure base run by the Boy Scouts of America as part of the Florida National High Adventure Sea Base. I am an employee of said organization, but this blog is entirely not officially affiliated with the Boy Scouts. Although I will only post information that is accurate to the best of my knowledge, your best course of action is to call the Florida Sea Base directly if you have any questions. Second, by reading this blog you can expect to be hear interesting going-ons at the BEC and more detailed accounts of crews that I am running and possibly pictures. I'll try to throw in some stories about the Keys history, ecology, community events and the like at times as well. Third, you can expect semi-regular updates! Obviously I have a job to do down here, but there is an utter lack of information regarding the programs run out of the BEC, official or otherwise. We do a lot of good, hard work changing the lives of Scouts and adults alike down at the Brinton Center and I want to shed some light on what a typical (if you can call anything we do typical) program entails.

I'm traveling to the Galapagos for school and will be arriving at the BEC on the 29th, so don't expect any posts until then unless I decide to write another one later today while I wait for paperwork to go through.

IP (Island Pride)