Notes for leader

Welcome to the leaders portal. Should you wish to make use of the online components of this Sea Escape, click register below to register your group/section. This will give you 31 days access.

This online version follows the same general pattern as the mostly offline version. You are free to print out and use the offline media which I have licensed under the Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence.

At the time of writing, there are five puzzles to solve. They can be done in small groups or as individuals. The first puzzle has one answer set by you the leader. The rest of the puzzles each have six slightly different questions and correspondingly different answers. This should allow groups to separate into six teams/patrols and should help discourage sneeky looks at one another's answers. If your scouts are solving these as indivituals then distribute the 6 question sets as you see fit.

Due to this being designed partially as a scavinger/treasure hunt about our scout hut, the teams/patrols are labelled: 1, Black; 2, Yellow; 3, Silver; 4, Blue; 5, Purple; 6, Pink. The numbers are important to know as some puzzles rely on them, the colours are the original colours of the locks used to lock the scattered treasure boxes.

The puzzles mostly lead to a 3 digit code (originally to unlock that chest's padlock). At time of writing, these puzzles are:

1. Where's Jack:The scouts are on radio watch and need to note down Cptn Jack's location from an overheard distress broadcast: once they have this they need to use the supplied googlemap to pan and zoom into his location. Once they find him they can progress to the next puzzle. You will place the Black Pearl somewhere on the world map, during setup. This can be accurate to a hundredth of a second (enough to hide him on your grounds!) But the Pearl must be no bigger than about 100m bow to stern, to make the task one of comprehension and not guess work, and to illustrate just how small things are when you look at them from the perspective of search and rescue.
2. The Siren's Score: It's a musical aside, (also online), for variety and to encorage others within the team. Leads to a three digit code.
3. Bearings Away: Use the online chart and plotter, or offline chart and construct the plotter to get a three digit code from the clue.
4. Get your fix: transits and isobaths: Find a location on the chart, again to get a three digit code.
5. Queen of the Seas:A chess buoyage rule mashup; leads to a three digit code.

For the offline version I hid instructions for each puzzle within the next mini-chest, locked with coded padlocks, placed in locations described in terms of maritime vocabulary: as if the scout hut was a boat and had a bow and stern. To help scouts solve the problems, I set up a reference table and left a glossary of terms like this one, a simplified key to map symbols, various other nautical tools and references including my copy of the RYA training charts, Alminac, a plotter and a pair of dividers.