“Carl Hall works on his navigation charts aboard the Mary L during the Langley Middle School Adventure Education class trip to the San Juan Islands in October.What do you get when you stuff about 40 middle school students and their adult chaperones, and enough gear and food for a military campaign, onto two boats and send them off into Puget Sound destined for islands near the horizon line?At Langley Middle School, all this adds up to just another field trip with Jay Freundlich’s Adventure Education class. On Oct. 9, the students kicked off the eighth year of LMS student adventure trips to the San Juan islands with a five-day voyage to and around Sucia Island aboard the converted tugboat Mary L and the sailing schooner Cutty Sark.Along the way, the students learned how to steer both motorized and sailing vessels, as well as how the marine and land ecosystems work together to support plants, animals and people.More important than the science on this trip was the social learning. Both the students and their teacher said learning to get along and function as a group was the most challenging task. Student Shannon Schrecengost said the 28 students and 10 adults who took the trip all had different goals for their days at sea.It was really a diverse group, she said. But between taking a ropes course in the weeks before the trip and facing the reality of being on small boats with many people for five days, Holten Schmidt said his classmates learned to get along.By the end, we were all a big group, he said.That was a fact for which Jay Freundlich said he was thankful. He said he knew there were more differences to iron out with this group than any he can remember from past years.I think these guys came the farthest in how they started out individually and as a group, he said.The trip’s success hinged on the group’s sense of humor. Sailing around islands in the open boats, the group had plenty to grumble about. Wind and rain blasted the young adventurers on their first day at sea, making the trip to the San Juans miserable. Snacking didn’t solve the misery, since the food was not up to the standards of most 13-year-olds. It was rationed, and Freundlich allowed no candy or soda.He banned candy, soda pop, and pretty much any of the snacks that kids our age actually like, said student Kyle Hubbard.Once the weather cleared, the students and their chaperones spent their days hiking, kayaking, swimming, setting up tents, searching for firewood, exploring caves and learning about navigation and almost every living thing they encountered along the way. It was more activity than many of the students were used to. Dylan Johnson knew he should have been drinking more water.Well, I guess my main memory was getting sick from dehydration and throwing up on my boxers, he said.To go ashore or explore any of the islands, the students had to paddle kayaks between the Mary L and the Cutty Sark and land. Freundlich said the kayaks allowed the students to get as close to the water and nature as possible. As they paddled through the week in near silence, the students saw groups of seals and a pod of porpoises. One of the porpoises set Chris Pettit laughing when it had an unintended collision with the Cutty Sark.I liked it when one of them smacked into the boat, Petit said.Not only were kayaks good platforms from which to watch nature, they were also a superior option to other modes of transportation.It’s better than swimming island to island, Freundlich said.That is true, for almost everyone who took the trip. However, eighth grader Landon Primrose might have been able to do the journey without a boat. He set the swimming record for the trip by swimming in Puget Sound’s icy, 52-degree water for more than 15 minutes.The October Adventure Education is one of two trips this year. Second-semester Adventure Education students will take the same trip, but will be accompanied by members of the South Whidbey AmeriCorps team. “