In his recent report on Fleet Week activities, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Carl Nolte noted that Fleet Week “is a big deal for the Naval Sea Cadets, a youth organization sponsored by the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard designed to get young people interested in the sea services, including the civilian merchant marine.” He described the Sea Cadets as “a mix of kids, some teenagers, a few as young as 10 or 11. Many of them looked like scale model sailors, neat and squared away, and others looked like little kids.”
One of the cadets he singled out was Oscar Melet, of Gate 6 ½, who has been sailing competitively for years. Oscar attends the Bay School in San Francisco, and wants to attend the Naval Academy at Annapolis for college and be a member of the elite Navy Seals. “In the meantime,” Carl reported, “he was working as a helper on deck aboard the museum ship Jeremiah O’Brien on a Sunday cruise on the bay.”
Like many of the Sea Cadets aboard, Oscar was assisting the regular crew as needed, working with passengers, cleaning up and picking up trash—unglamorous grunt work. Carl observed, “That didn’t bother him, because ’I really like being on ships, too,’ he said.”
Carl also interviewed Oscar’s mother, Nikki, who told him: “We teach them skills, electronics and leadership. There is lots of training,” adding that this kind of training has something extra: the military setting the Sea Cadets provide. “We teach them to be respectful and responsive,” she said, adding another aspect: honor.
Oscar has organized bay cleanups from the family’s floating home on Gate 6 1/2. Best wishes to him as he pursues his dreams.