Yesterday started out like any other Saturday at CTT- late wake-up, Sweet Saturday breakfast, a nice service planned by cabin H. Then there was a commotion from the back row of the congregation. Some pirates had shown up and were stealing benches!
The sea bandits continued to pilfer seats until almost everyone was standing. At that point their leader, Captain Submo Pete (Jason Gersh), explained that today was Pirate Day! This would be a day of fun games and pirate-themed activities where cheating, swindling and stealing were encouraged.The campers were split into four teams, assigned colors and the games began.
The first assignment for each team was to pick a team name and a captain. The captain could be mutinied against at meals and a new leader could be chosen from the other counselors on the team. The Red Hot Chili Pirates were led by Mighty Bill Young initially, then Flip-Flop (the counselor) took over. Rachel/Medusa was the captain for the Blue Kleptomaniacs and I was the captain for the White One-Eyed Buccaneers. The black team had a revolving stable of leaders, starting the day with Albert, then Nicole took over and they finished the day with Krista at the helm.
The first activity of the day was a treasure hunt. Each team was given clues as to where they could find the treasure and they went on their way to find stuff. But alas, treachery was afoot even in the opening event of Pirate Day.
The black team began searching for the treasure supposedly with the entire team trying to help. See, when a team found a clue they had to perfectly draw it, to the minor details, on a notepad. After the hunt was over the black team discovered that none of their drawings were correct! At a loss for an answer, they continued on to the next game, which was a piratey version of ‘Red Light, Green Light.’
The black team failed to capture the red team’s gold a single time during the game, setting them back. All morning it seemed as if they’d just had some bad luck. But at the lunch the cause for their ill fortunes was revealed.
When the teams adjourned to their cabins to change into their team colors, just minutes after the assignments were made, Nathaniel Schwartz pulled on some black clothes and began to do the activities with the black team. The problem was that Nathaniel had been assigned to the red team.
Acting as a spy he deliberately sabotaged the black team in the early events. It was one of the more daring movements of the day and put the red team in a good position early on.
In the afternoon, there was some pillaging of the empty cabin D, some water balloon launching and some life-sized Battleship using the racquetball court and water balloons. After the games, the teams headed down to the lake for a canoe relay, which the black team won by only sending four people by canoe as the rest of the team walked around the lake. A special mention should go to Bryan Kirks of the blue team, however, because he rowed everyone on his team to the destination by making several trips.
During the evening, there was a good ol’ fashioned pirate contest to determine the best marauder at CTT. The teams sent one representative each to be judged in different areas. The criteria took into account the best pirate lingo, best pirate dress, best pirate back story and many other piratey categories. There were a few stand-outs from this section of the evening. Stevie and James put on a very lively sword-fighting pirate dance, Gerald showed his skill in the belching competition and Simon proved that the White Bucs were actually behind a lot of the biggest events in history.
After the skits, songs, speeches and belching the Red Hot Chili Pirates were declared the winners. It was a long, fun day at camp and everyone had a great time being an outlaw of the high seas, if only for a few hours. The campers and counselors danced the night away at the pirate social and that was the end of the marauding bands at CTT.
Even though Pirate Day was awesome, there will be many more big things coming up here in the next week. There is Monte Carlo night, a trip to the skating rink and much, much more. It is definitely sad that summer is coming to an end, but I think we are all looking forward to all the big things we have left to do before we leave CTT.