Twice in the past few years our family has gone to BSA Sea Base. My wife and daughter went to St. Thomas in 2022 and my son and I went to the Bahamas in 2023. This post describes the things I have learned about Sea Base that may be useful to other scouters.
Overview
For Sea Base sailing adventures, each crew sails on a privately-owned boat with a captain (or captain and mate in the case of married captains). There is no “base” in the form of a land-based camp. Instead, each crew meets its captain at a marina or dock and is then ferried to the boat via dinghy. You then sail around for a few days and explore uninhabited cays, postcard beaches, and cute island communities.
Registration opens in January the year before the trip. We reserved early to ensure we could get our target week. This means you register about 18 months out. The cost varies by location and year but expect to pay around $1,500 in fees per person. Our flights to Marsh Harbour, Bahamas were about $800. We also paid for a hotel for the first night, and many participants purchased snorkeling gear and other supplies. Ballpark, I recommend budgeting $2,500 to $3,000 per person. It’s expensive.
Sea Base is also more of a “roughing it vacation” than a true high adventure. Provided you are in decent shape and a good swimmer, there is no need to train. While you may be uncomfortable at times, Sea Base is not physically demanding.
My top 12 Tips for Sea Base:
Make travel plans early. For the Bahamas adventures, you will fly in and out of Marsh Harbour, which has limited commercial flights. We investigated flying to Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, or Nassau and then trying to take a small plane to Marsh Harbour but found those options to be more expensive. We ended up booking directly with American Airlines through its group reservations from Austin to Miami to Marsh Harbor. Start calling airlines a year out. Also, make sure everyone has a passport or has applied for a passport at least 6 months out.
Build in time for delays. We arrived in Marsh Harbour about 24 hours before our departure to account for possible flight delays. Surprisingly, our flights were on time. We had a good lunch at Colors Restaurant and then some of us took our snorkeling gear and hiked about a mile to Mermaid Reef. The reef is a few hundred yards offshore, and it was a great opportunity for scouts to practice snorkeling before we got on the boats. We stayed at Island Breezes hotel, which was affordable with room sharing. On our departure day, we were able to book an afternoon flight that got us back to Austin that night.
Have your paperwork squared away. It would not be BSA without copious paperwork. I had a 3-ring notebook with each required form separated by tabs. This greatly expedited the review.
Leave the Class As at home. (This may not apply if you are going to Sea Base Florida). Sea Base Marsh Harbour is super, super casual. Not the place for lots of epaulets or patches. Our scouts decided to all buy $20 gaudy Hawaiian shirts with sailboats for our travel days, which created quite the scene in the Miami airport.
Bring sun-protecting shirts and hats. We all bought the long sleeve technical Sea Base shirts, which made great snorkeling shirts. Many boys brought wide-brim troop hats. My preference was a Patagonia sun hoodie with a hat. One of our scouts with very fair skin brought lightweight tights to protect his legs. Adults need to be diligent in ensuring the scouts apply sunscreen to avoid burns. We still had some get sunburn.
The only footwear you need are flip flops. Seriously, no need for sneakers or socks.
You don’t need much in the way of clothes either. A bathing suit, dry set of clothes, and set of sleep clothes is pretty much it. A light travel towel dries much faster than cotton beach towels. If all your stuff does not fit in a 24” duffel, then you have too much stuff.
Practice snorkeling. By far the best activity is snorkeling and playing in the water. Everyone should have a quality mask and snorkel and know how to use them. We held a few meetings before the trip at Barton Springs pool in Austin to practice diving with a snorkel. The scouts all had earned the snorkeling award before the trip. You do not need to bring fins as the Sea Base-provided fins were fine, but you can if you want to. I brought my freediving fins and a weight belt because I like to dive deep (FYI – The Guide to Safe Scouting allows the use of weight belts for people with SCUBA certifications. I brought my card just in case it came up, but our captain did not ask). We were never in water deeper than 35 feet. Be prepared to wear a BSA-required inflatable vest for snorkeling. Deflated they are easy to ignore, and some participants liked the ability to inflate them to rest on the top of the water.
Someone in your crew should have a GoPro or similar underwater camera. iPhone cameras worked great for above water and shallow water, but to get underwater and body-surfing memories it helps to have a Go-Pro. We also took a small drone for aerial shots. Being able to make a movie of the troop trip was great.
Expect the sleeping situation to be challenging. To keep costs down, Sea Base puts many more people on a boat than a comparable private charter. Our boat was a 53-foot monohull, and we had the captain and mate plus 4 adults and 8 scouts – so 14 people total. There was room only for a few people to sleep inside where it is hot, with most of us sleeping in the cockpit or on deck on backpacking air mattresses and a sheet. The deck is not level in most places. In the event of rain, people will get wet. We were not entirely unprepared for this as we had read other scouters’ reviews, so we brought tarps and a few backpacking bivys. One night when storms threatened, I rigged some tarps off the boom over the main deck area where the boys were sleeping, but had it really rained they would have been soaked. The bivys were sweatboxes. There is not really a good solution to this problem, but I do recommend brining a few small tarps (5×7 or smaller) that could serve as waterproof blankets in the event of a downpour at night. Mainly, people just need to be prepared to get wet. Fortunately, it is not cold.
Understand that personal dynamics greatly affect the experience. When my wife and daughter went to the USVI, they were assigned to a grumpy captain who clashed with some of the crew members. This created a negative experience for many people. Our crew got along with our captain fine. Crews should be aware that for the captains, the boat you are on is their home so really pay attention to instructions. I would not want to go to Sea Base with a person in my crew who is abrasive or hard to deal with or likes to argue. If you have someone like this in your crew (particularly an adult), consider strategies to mitigate this problem before the trip. Remember, you are going to spend days within 50 feet of everyone in your crew!
Get a conch. I am not really a souvenir guy, but you can buy a conch made into a horn for $10 at Man-O-War key. Nothing like everyone standing on deck blowing their conchs at sundown!
If you have specific questions please leave them in the comments below.
Vamonos Baby! 