Where Ships Squeeze Through

Thursday you commit to your final project — on paper, to the facilitator. Three days. Today's job is small: know the menu.

1. Open the project menu. Read all twelve formats. Actually read them.
2. On MY COURSE (back cover), write TWO formats you could see yourself building.
3. Making a map today anyway? So is your project, maybe — the story map format runs on our own Map Studio. Try it during game time.

Tomorrow you narrow to one. Wednesday is a trial run. Thursday you claim it. Small steps, every day.

One sheet, folded like a book. Cover: your name, "Day 13," the date. Then:

One more piece of kit: a second plain sheet from the facilitator. In Mission 2 you'll turn it into a navigator's plotting sheet with your own hands — grid, compass, and all, exactly like a 1717 navigator ruling up a fresh page.

Zoom out and the ocean looks free. It is not. Ships crowd into a few narrow doors, and they line up to get through. Our own Chokepoints map shows the world's shipping roads — every gold dot a ship riding a real sea lane. Find where they bunch.

Four doors to hunt. Jump straight to any of them:

1. Suez Canal. One canal through a desert. About 12 percent of world trade squeezes through it.
2. Strait of Malacca. About a third of global shipping rides this one strait.
3. Red Sea, Bab-el-Mandeb. The narrow south door of the Red Sea. Since 2023, attacks on cargo ships here have pushed many crews to sail the long way around Africa instead. Thousands of miles longer.
4. Panama Canal. A shortcut cut through a continent. In 2023 and 2024 a drought cut its daily traffic by about a third. Rain refilled it. Sailors still watch the sky there.

Then play Bellamy's move. Hit 🏴‍☠️ Park your pirate and anchor your sloop in the open ocean. Watch the counter for one minute. Now re-park it AT a door. Watch again.

It is spring 1717. You are the navigator. Your sloop lies off Jamaica, and the plan is the same one Bellamy sailed: run north for the Carolinas. He took more than 50 ships in about a year on this hunting ground.

First, rule up your plotting sheet — navigators drew their own, and so do you:

1. Plain sheet, tall way up. Draw a grid: 6 columns, 8 rows, squares about two fingers wide. Neat beats fast — a crooked grid plots a crooked voyage.
2. Top right corner: a North arrow pointing straight up, and this compass note: 000° = straight up · 045° = perfect diagonal (up-and-right) · 030° and 010° lean closer to straight up. Copy the little compass on screen.

You have no GPS. You have three numbers: heading, speed, time. That is dead reckoning. Plot it:

1. Mark your start dot near the bottom of the grid. That is Jamaica.
2. Leg 1: heading 045°, speed 5 knots, 6 hours. Distance = speed times time = 30 nautical miles. One square = 10, so draw 3 squares toward 045°. Use the compass rose.
3. Leg 2: heading 030°, 4 knots, 8 hours. You do the math this time. Draw it from where Leg 1 ended.
4. Leg 3: heading 010°, 6 knots, 5 hours. Same drill.
5. The end of Leg 3 is where you think you are. Mark it with an X.

Now the sea cheats. A current pushed you 10 nautical miles west and you never felt it. Mark a dot one full square west of your X. That dot is where you really are. The gap between X and dot is dead reckoning error. It grew every day at sea.

So how did pirates ever find prey on all that water? Mostly they did not chase. They parked at the doors. Even a lost ship must pass a door. Your Leg 1 runs at one: the Windward Passage, the gap between Cuba and Hispaniola. Bellamy took the Whydah herself near it, after a three-day chase.

1717 and 2026. Three hundred years apart, and piracy runs on the same machine. Three parts:

All three lined up in the 1717 Caribbean. Treasure and trade ships on set routes. Island gaps like the Windward Passage. And navies an ocean away.

Do they line up today? Test it. Not long ago, pirates seized a cargo ship called the Ruen off Somalia. In 2024, navy sailors freed the ship and its crew. Ask the three questions: was the cargo worth money? Did geography squeeze the ships into a line? Was anyone guarding the water?

Modern piracy is real, and it is about ships and cargo. Crews train for it. Navies patrol for it. It is a geography problem, and you now know the three parts. That is why it belongs on your map.

Fast finishers: earn game time. Whydah’s Voyage awaits.

1. "Step in if you walked through a door to get into this room." Everyone. That is the point.
2. "Step in if your adopted ship passed a chokepoint this week." Say which one if you know it.
3. "Step in if you think the world watches the wrong door." One voice in, one voice out: why?

What does where someone chooses to sail tell you about what they're running from, or toward?

Bellamy chose the doors. Your adopted ship's owners chose its route. You are choosing a course too.

Evidence you already own: the four doors from kayak day. The vote from Day 8. The articles you signed on Day 9. The numbers from Day 5. Use at least one.

Your ship is out there right now. Somewhere ahead on its route, there is probably a door.

Pitch Day is Thursday. Two days. Time to commit, in pencil.

1. Circle ONE person on your list. Your lead.
2. Circle ONE format. The way you would actually build it.

Tomorrow you test your pick against Salem itself. Thursday you stand and claim it. A circle in pencil tonight beats a blank stare Thursday.