Nautical Challenge

On the surface, this game is a simple roll the dice, move your boat around the board, first one home wins. The catch is that each move, the player must answer a skill-testing question, with the question topic depending on the segment of the race. There are 10 decks of question cards: General Boating Rules; Nautical Knowledge; Buoys and Markers; Sea Survival; Lights & Flags; Fire Fighting; First Aid; Sound Signals; Engineering; and Knots & Anchors. There also is a Flash Card deck of signs and objects to recognize that comes into play on certain spaces around the board. There are some interesting accessories: there is a real rope for answering knot questions, and a real triangular bandage that must be put on another player as part of a First Aid test. Players keep score with little black Life Rings, starting with 10, losing some along the way and winning one for each correct answer. The winner is not the first home but the one with the most rings.