Lost at sea - a team building game

Another ‘pen and paper’ group survival game and a team building activity to encourage interaction and teamwork among your young people. The chances of ‘survival’ depend on their ability to rank the salvaged items in relative order of importance.

You have chartered a yacht with three friends, for the holiday trip of a lifetime across the Atlantic Ocean. Because none of you have any previous sailing experience, you have hired an experienced skipper and two-person crew.

Unfortunately in mid Atlantic a fierce fire breaks out in the ships galley and the skipper and crew have been lost whilst trying to fight the blaze. Much of the yacht is destroyed and is slowly sinking.

Your location is unclear because vital navigational and radio equipment have been damaged in the fire. Your best estimate is that you are many hundreds of miles from the nearest landfall.

You and your friends have managed to save 15 items, undamaged and intact after the fire. In addition, you have salvaged a four man rubber life craft and a box of matches. Rank the items correctly and you will survive until rescue comes. Make too many mistakes and...

Download (pdf) the complete 'Lost at Sea' team building game.

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Comments

[steve b]

Yes thanks a lot for sharing - v excited to do this w my team cheers

[Stephan Bashkir]

This is a great game because it forces everyone in the team to work together. It fosters trust and friendship among the team, which will most likely be working together a majority of the time. By having games and tasks like this for teams to complete, it better helps them perform and succeed at their job.

[Krishnakumar]

Had done this test a decade ago. The trainer used this game to demonstrate the concept of synergy and leadership quality. First, soled the game individually. Then formed teams and selected (by members) one leader for each team. Team collectively solved the problem. Then compared the individual scores with team score. In all cases, team score was better than average scores of team members. Also done several permutations like comparing the best individual score among team members to combined score, leader's score to combined score etc. A lot was there to learn from such games.

[Toni]

Great resource for indoor team building.

[Mark Collard - ice-breakers & team-building games expert]

There's a couple of ideas here that I have not seen before, so I'm adding them to my repertoire asap. Thanks Grahame...

[www.gforcebc.com.au]

You have published a fantastic resource.

[Haley]

This was an awesome project to do with my class mates.

[work in cruise]

Hi there, I enjoy reading through your article post. I wanted to write
a little comment to support you.

[Account Deleted]

It was so funny today with my team.

[Tobin Crenshaw]

This worked very well, thank you!

[Kirill Lykov]

I'm the head of the non-profit English Club in Novosibirsk State University (Russia).
Your games is pretty well written and I used it in our meetings several times with success. I had known some of these games before due I participated in Intel's trainings but when I tried to find description of these games your web-site was the only one where I could get it for free. Thank you for you work.

[Kishi]

Thank you so much for taking the time and effort to put together such a wonderful resource for us all to access. God bless you!

[Carol Dubery]

What a wonderful find. Have just started a youth group for tweens - this site is amazing. God Bless.

[kenman]

only one word to describe this site - Awesome!! may God bless you for the efforts you have put in. - kenman

[Lukewarm]

If only I knew about this site while I was volunteering in Sunday school lol. It would have made things much less painful

[Grahame]

@Lukewarm. Thanks for your comment. I write all the discussion starters, talks and reflections myself. The icebreakers and team builder ideas have been collected over 25+ years in youth ministry and come from a variety of public sources. I've just tried to put them together in a way which is helpful to youth workers. At least that's the plan :-)

[Lukewarm]

This is such a great resource. Do you come up with these yourself? Because they are great.