BSA’s Tour and Activity plans have been eliminated effective April 1, 2017 – see details here. Remember that this doesn’t mean you don’t need a plan, just that you no longer need to file that particular plan with BSA. For Sea Scouts, one of the most important kinds of plans to have is a float plan.
Safety Afloat says: Complete the preparation by writing a detailed itinerary, or float plan, noting put-in and pullout locations and waypoints, along with the approximate time the group should arrive at each. Travel time should be estimated generously. File the float plan with parents, the local council office if traveling on running water, and local authorities if appropriate. Assign a member of the unit committee to alert authorities if prearranged check-ins are overdue. Make sure everyone is promptly notified when the trip is concluded.
There’s an official Sea Scout float plan template – you can download that right here. Also, the Coast Guard Auxiliary float plan works well for Sea Scouts – you can access it here in a fillable PDF form. The point of a float plan is to gather in advance the right information so that if the worst happens, your ashore crew (usually one or more parents not on the voyage) can quickly get a rescue under way if you don’t return on time. Doing that effectively means knowing quite a bit about where you expect to be and when, what boats you are using, where you will launch, etc It is a good practice to use float plans to communicate details of a voyage to all the families in your ship.