"Nautical Novice" is a SpongeBob SquarePants episode from season 6. In this episode, SpongeBob tries to impress Mrs. Puff by memorizing the history of boating.

Characters[]

• Incidentals
  • Incidental 2
  • Incidental 104
  • Incidental 14
  • Incidental 67
  • Incidental 27
  • Scooter (Inc 37B)
  • Harris
  • Incidental 150
  • Incidental 118
  • Steve
• Mrs. Puff
• SpongeBob SquarePants
• King Neptune ^(mentioned)
• Gary the Snail
• French Narrator
• Dolphin ^(mentioned)
• Clam ^(mentioned)
• Captain of the Lady Scallion ^(mentioned)
• Jellyfish

Synopsis[]

The episode starts off at Mrs. Puff's Boating School, everyone is bored hoping for the class to end while she is talking about steering and SpongeBob is taking notes in an exciting personality. When class ends, Mrs. Puff reminds the class that they are going on a field trip to the Bikini Bottom Museum of Boating tomorrow and the bus will pick them up at 8:00 AM. When SpongeBob realizes that this is finally his chance to impress Mrs. Puff and get his driver's license, he reads a 7,400-page book called The History of All Boating Ever.... When SpongeBob finishes the book at 7:59 AM on the next day, he ends up falling asleep when he realizes that tomorrow is today and he is going to be late for the bus.

He races the bus once it leaves his house. Mrs. Puff, wanting to go without SpongeBob, tells Nat, the bus driver, to speed up. But SpongeBob suddenly comes in through the window. While SpongeBob begins talking to Mrs. Puff, she realizes SpongeBob's bad smell and gives him a bottle of Shower in a Can. SpongeBob then starts talking about the trivia of boating, which starts to give Mrs. Puff a headache. So, when the class finally arrives at the museum, SpongeBob is paying no attention as he is still talking about boating to Mrs. Puff, crashes into the front window and gets converted into a puddle outside the bus door, he then is back up again when he sees the museum in front of him.

Mrs. Puff explains it was the largest boat ever that is now converted into a museum and can no longer be operated unless it goes to its yearly check at the port. Throughout the day, SpongeBob keeps interrupting Mrs. Puff to tell the students what she is about to say, much to her chagrin. Right when the class is about to leave, Mrs. Puff notices that SpongeBob has gone missing, but it turns out that he was in the driving room of the boat. He turns on the air conditioners on very high without noticing, which accidentally starts the boat.

When Mrs. Puff finds SpongeBob as she comes back into the museum, she tries to stop the boat when she noticed it has been started, but she has never driven any boat so advanced before. So when she notices that the boat is going to crash into Bikini Bottom after SpongeBob turns the boat on Turbo Speed, SpongeBob tries to stop the boat by battening down the hatches, lowering the anchor, uttering a hearty seaman's laugh, and doing the reverse 720 tailspin. And right when the boat is about to destroy Bikini Bottom, it stops, only tapping the first building. When Mrs. Puff and SpongeBob leave the boat, Mrs. Puff gives SpongeBob his driver's license due to her impression.

However, she is outraged when she finds out that the museum owner was simply taking the boat into Bikini Bottom for a checkup at the port and that he was doing all of the driving. As a result she angrily tears up SpongeBob's driver's license, leaving the latter heartbroken. The museum owner then suggests that they should go get some ice cream to cheer SpongeBob up while he had the pin of becoming an Honorary Sea Legs as his bright side. When the three are about to go have ice cream, SpongeBob notices that the headlights of the boat are still on. As he runs back inside, the museum owner and Mrs. Puff try to tell SpongeBob to not touch anything, but the latter didn't listen and he flips the boat on its opposite side as Mrs. Puff inflates once again, ending the episode.

Production[]

Art[]

Model sheets[]

Deleted scene[]

In the original storyboard, there was a deleted scene that showed Mrs. Puff giving her class an acronym to remember: CALAMITY, standing for "Calm And Lively Awareness Makes Impervious Trip (for) You."

Music[]

( ‣ ) Production music

( • ) Original music

( ◦ ) SpongeBob music

 • Drunken Sailor - Nicolas Carr [Title card]
 ‣ The Achterhoek Dances - Jan Rap [Opening at boating school]
 • Steel Licks 35 - Jeremy Wakefield [That night]
 ‣ Sea Battle [#48] - John Fox [The History Of All Boating Ever]
 • Hello Blues - Sage Guyton, Jeremy Wakefield [SpongeBob starts reading]
 • Steel Licks 78 - Jeremy Wakefield [7:59 AM]
 ‣ Drama Link (B) - Hubert Clifford ["Hang on a minute, it is tomorrow!"]
 • Spongemonger - Sage Guyton, Jeremy Wakefield [SpongeBob runs after the bus]
 ‣ Hit and Run - Sam Spence ["Step on it!"]
 ‣ Hawaiian Cocktail - Richard Myhill [Shower in a can]
 ‣ Captain Pugwash - Johnny Pearson [SpongeBob shows Mrs. Puff a model of the HMS Pinafore]
 ‣ On The Beach - Kapono Beamer [SpongeBob telling Mrs. Puff boating trivia]
 ‣ Nautical Discovery [#97] - Harry Bluestone, Emil Cadkin [Exterior of boating museum]
 • Steel Licks 47 - Jeremy Wakefield ["No problemo, Mrs. P."]
 ‣ Nautical Fantasy - W Trytel [Inside the museum]
 • I'm Ready Fanfare - Nicolas Carr ["I can now taste the sweet lamination of a fresh boating license."]
 ‣ The Jovial Buccaneers [#33] - John Fox [The Lady Scallion]
 ‣ The Navy Lark - James Moody, Tommy Reilly [Museum montage]
 • Whats This Sting - Nicolas Carr ["SpongeBob?"]
 • Tension Bits - Nicolas Carr, Sage Guyton, Jeremy Wakefield [SpongeBob missing]
 ‣ Nautical Fantasy - W Trytel ["Oh, boy, here it is. The main controls."]
 ‣ Dramatic Sea Battle - Gerhard Trede [SpongeBob accidentally starts the boat]
 ‣ Fierce Fight - Gerhard Trede [Alarm goes off]
 ‣ The Jovial Buccaneers [#32] - John Fox ["Chapter 1: Batten down the hatches."]
 ‣ Bucaneers 5 [#12] - Harry Bluestone, Emil Cadkin [Reverse 720 tailspin]
 ‣ Horlepiep - Jan Rap [SpongeBob and Mrs. Puff leave the museum]
 • Birth of the Krabby Patty - Nicolas Carr [SpongeBob's license]
 ‣ Epic of the South - Larry Hochman ["Oh, boy! At long last!"]
 ‣ Spanish Ladies (B) - Robin Jeffrey, Tim Laycock [the museum was being tugged into port]
 ‣ Drama Link (D) - Hubert Clifford ["Don't touch anything, you twit!"]
 • Steel Licks 40 - Jeremy Wakefield [SpongeBob goes to turn off the headlights]
 • Nude Sting - Nicolas Carr [Boat flips over]

Release[]

• This episode is available on the Spongicus, Season 6 Volume 1, SpongeBob Pack: Volume 1, SpongeBob's Legendary Adventures, The Ultimate SpongeBob Box Set, Kids Double Pack: Volume 6, SpongeBob SquarePants Vol. 9, Complete Sixth Season, The SpongeBob SquarePants Collection, Driving Bikini Bottom Crazy!, 3 DVD Value Pack Volume 2, The SpongeBob SquarePants 8 Season DVD Collection, Time Travel, Next 100 Episodes, The Best 200 Episodes Ever, The Fifth & Sixth Seasons, and The Best 300 Episodes Ever DVDs.

Trivia[]

General[]

• This marks the 200th episode segment of the series in packaging order.
• This episode was paired up with "Spongicus" during the original airing, but has since been re-airing with "Penny Foolish."^[1]
• This episode uses the same title card track as its sister episode. This is similar to what happened with "Naughty Nautical Neighbors" and "Boating School," and would happen again 16 years later with "Mooned!" and "Hysterical History."
  • While "Naughty Nautical Neighbors" and "Boating School" have different portions of the music being played, these episodes have the same portion of the music.
• The title card for this episode looks similar to that of "Krusty Love," except it has a red background with black crabs on a gray net.
  • The title card also possesses more crabs on the net than "Krusty Love."
• This episode's title refers to the dialogue line in the SpongeBob SquarePants theme song "If nautical nonsense be something you wish." The words "Nautical Nonsense" are changed to "Nautical Novice."
• Foreshadowing: SpongeBob mentions the boating museum gets taken out to port once a year. Near the end, it is revealed the boat was moving because a tugboat man was pulling it.
• When talking about the Sandy Nub, SpongeBob says, "With two direct-action steam turbines producing 6,500 horsepower geared up to triple screws, it'll get your spices where they need to go." Triple Screw is a fancy term for three propellers.
• The license that Mrs. Puff gives SpongeBob says it expires on December 14, 2003. It is the same one from the episodes "Sleepy Time" and "No Free Rides."
• The license that Mrs. Puff gives to SpongeBob says that he has yellow hair, even though SpongeBob does not have hair at all, but in "The Smoking Peanut," he tells Sandy that he needs to get a haircut. SpongeBob has one black hair, as seen in "Krusty Krab Training Video." SpongeBob combs and dries his hair in "The Sponge Who Could Fly." He also has lots of brown hair in "SpongeHenge."
• This was the first episode to be written by Derek Iversen.
• This is one of the few times that Mrs. Puff actually throws away her chance to get SpongeBob out of her life.
• This is one of the few episodes where SpongeBob comes very close to getting his license.

Dub facts[]

• In the Indonesian dub, the scene where SpongeBob telling Mrs. Puff his boating trivia while in the bus is skipped due to time constraints.

Cultural references[]

• The first sentence in The History of All Boating Ever... book, "In the beginning, Neptune created the sail" is a parody of the first sentence of the Holy Bible, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth."
• H.M.S. Pinafore is a play written by W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan.
• The Bikini Bottom Museum of Boating may be a reference to the USS Midway Museum in San Diego, California, as both feature every display on a large ship.
• The music that plays during the boat museum montage is the theme song from the 1950s British radio sitcom The Navy Lark.

Errors[]

• When Incidental 104 runs past SpongeBob in the classroom, her shirt briefly disappears.

• When most of the students in Mrs. Puff's classroom stop and bump into each other, Incidental 104 has some of the pearls on her necklace miscolored as black instead of blue.

• SpongeBob's teeth are clenched when he says, "Whoa!" while falling down from the ladder.
• When the camera shows a close-up of The History of All Boating Ever... book, SpongeBob's legs disappear from that shot.

• When SpongeBob gets inside of the bus, Mrs. Puff blinks, but her eyelids are white instead of green.
  • This also happens during one of the shots where Mrs. Puff is spraying the Shower in a Can bottle.
• When Mrs. Puff is spraying the Shower in a Can bottle, her fin resembles a human hand with an index finger and a thumb.

• When SpongeBob says, "Ever been on a...," he blinks, but his eyelashes are still seen when his eyes are half-closed for a split second.

• When SpongeBob says, "I can now taste the sweet, sweet lamination of a fresh boating license," his white teeth turn yellow for a split second.

• When SpongeBob says, "I knew it!," his holes are misplaced.

• During the scene where the kids are cheering, Incidental 14 mistakenly has a belly button.
• When Mrs. Puff says, "That's not a projection screen!," her lips are out of sync with the animation.

• As SpongeBob is doing the hearty laugh, his tongue appears completely detached from the rest of his mouth for a split second.
• There are several errors regarding the reveal that the boating museum was being pulled by the tugboat guy:
  • When SpongeBob stops the boat museum, it shows that the bow on the boat lightly taps the first building. But later, when it shows the tugboat guy, it shows in the background that he is not even near the city, which would not give him enough room to be there anyway.
  • The fish who was tugging the boat is in front of the boat. However, the fish in the tugboat does not appear when the outside of the boat museum is shown multiple times from the front, even when it starts moving.
  • Some of the actions caused by SpongeBob, such as the turbo speed and spinning the boat around, could not have been made by the tugboat guy.
• When SpongeBob and Mrs. Puff see the tugboat guy, the headlights are off. When SpongeBob looks back at the boat, the headlights are suddenly on.
• At the end of the episode, Mrs. Puff is shown ripping up SpongeBob's license. However, the picture of SpongeBob on the boating license has a black and ticker outline instead of his usual dark green outline.

Names in other languages[]

Language	Name	Meaning
Russian	Непослушный ученик Neposlushnyy uchenik	Disobedient Student
Spanish (American)	Novicio náutico	Nautical Novice
Spanish (European)	Novato náutico	Nautical Novice

References[]

1. ^ Nickstory - March 29, 2008