boat games

We had rain ALL DAY yesterday so there was little hope of going to the boatyard. I did think about going over there and washing the topsides, but I got lazy. And the thought of standing in cold rain, well, just didn't sound that appealing. I could have gone down and read some sea stories, like Sjogin did, but decided to stay in and prepare for company.

We had some folks over for game night, and we played some really fun games and had a lot of laughs. That got me to thinking about what kind of games are good for the boat. Space is limited, so games can't require a lot of people, or have a lot of pieces. Nor can they require a great deal of time because there is usually something to do or check on when we're sitting at anchor. So Risk, Monopoly, Diplomacy, and Axis & Allies are all out. I have always had a vision of playing dominoes on the boat, but that might be complicated too.

You'd think that Scrabble would be disqualified for all of those reasons, but we have a travel Scrabble and play it all the time. The tiles click into a grid-board. It's kind of a pain to take apart, but it's worth the hassle.

Last night we played a few games that would work on the boat. The first game we played was Catch Phrase. We played with 6 people, guys vs girls. The game has a little gadget that you pass around. A phrase appears in the display window and the reader has to get his teammates to say the phrase without using any of the words in the phrase or any hand gestures. It's like $25,000 Pyramid without the pyramid. Or the $25,000. That was a lot of fun. Girls won 3 games to 2. We also played a community variant where we all guessed and tried to get around the circle before the timer ran out.

Then we played Mad Gab. GREAT game. Hilarious. We played with three teams made of couples who are not couples. Each team tries to get three of the clues right in three minutes. The faster you get them all the more points you get; if time runs out you get as many points as clues correct. Each of the clues is a group of words that if said in the proper way make up a phrase of some kind. The guesser reads the words, and the partner tries to help them (number of words, syllables in each word, long or short vowels, pace, etc). For example, "Ace Lip Puff That Hung" comes out as "A slip of the tongue." Get it? Here's another: "Eye Mull of Mush Sheen" comes out as "I'm a love machine." The funny part is that as a spectator you can kind of hear what the person is trying to say, but as a guesser, you're completely befuddled.

We're definitely bringing those to the boat.

And of course, a regular old deck of cards can go a long way. Allison just learned how to play spades, so hopefully we will get some of that going this summer.

What about you? What games do you have/bring aboard? What games should I add to my list?