If you don’t keep up with the comments here, you may have missed Peter Roach’s comment on last week’s “Guarding 16” post. Apparently I’m not the only one who looks on the VHF as a form of entertainment. But Peter has taken it to a whole other level aboard his CSY 44 Grace. He’s turned it into a complete bingo-type game called “SailO.” With Peter’s permission, I am reposting his comment here in full with the complete rules of SailO for your use and entertainment when the cruising season here kicks off again.
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SailO – Invented by Peter Roach, Captain of Grace, a CSY 44
SailO is a fun game we play on the boat while cruising the East coast of Florida or in the Bahamas. SailO is adapted from Bingo for the cruising and boating community.
The rules for SailO are simple.
To play the game you place a marker over a space on your Bingo style card when you hear a word or phrase said over the VHF radio. You can also get credit for an inference, such as, if you had Radio Check on one of your squares and someone said “can anyone hear me” you would get credit.
What is needed:
Blank cards – we make them up on the computer and they look like this (this one is filled in)
Beans, pennies, or other means of covering the squares. Make sure they are heavy enough so your card and markers will not fly away in a breeze.
A VHF radio
A busy anchorage
How the game is played:
You write in common phrases said on the VHF into each one of your squares on your card.
Don’t worry if someone copies your phrases just don’t put them in the same positions on the card. You can use boat names, people’s names, or virtually anything that can be heard on the VHF. The order is real important (If you have older kids make them all write down the phrases on slips of paper and then draw them from a hat and fill out the card in the order they are drawn. Otherwise it is likely to be a short game). Once you have the cards filled in you can play as many times as you like with the cards. Just make sure you hand them out at random. You will probably need a new card in a new harbor since the boat names and places will change.
Listen to the VHF and place your pennies over the squares when you hear the word, phrase, or inference. If there is any doubt the Captains Word is law (or we like to think so)!
Usually a prize will help keep kids motivated; e.g., whoever wins SailO – picks the movie tonight, does not have to do dishes, gets the hammock, etc.
You can even play this across multiple boats. The first one to get an entire row, column, or diagonal corner to corner covered goes on the VHF and states their boat name and then calls out SailO. It works particularly well during a radio net (use dual watch on your VHF so you can call SailO on another channel and not interrupt the radio net).
Remember – having fun is what we are out there to do. Don’t let running the boat get in the way of the fun.
Ps. You have to give me credit if you use this game. Just like boatball, I made it up.
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If you are curious about boat ball or any of the other entertaining pasttimes that Peter has come up with, you can follow him and Grace on their own blog here.