Back to Sailing

Ok - back to sailing. Last week, I blogged about how I started sailing. Unfortunately, the sailing pretty much ended there as well, until 2 weeks ago.

My boss planned a small get together on his small yacht for my team, so on a nice warm Sunday morning, the 7 of us went to Raffles Marina, dressed for a day out on the water. After a relaxed lunch, we climbed onto the boat around noon, and made our way out of the harbour, and into the calm waters off the west of Singapore.

Piloting a yacht is quite different from a dinghy such as a Laser. The principles of sailing are the same (the Bernoulli Effect), but it takes a little more to run a family sized yacht.

The first difference (aside from the size and the cabin) that I noticed was the impressive amount of instrumentation - a GPS, depth gauge, wind speed and direction meter, radios etc, and an iPod hooked up to a stereo. Gotta have some tunes. Another difference was the way the yacht was steered: on a dinghy we manually steer using the tiller connected to the rudder, but here there was a large steering wheel. Makes sense since it's probably hydraulically linked to the rudder - you'd need a lot of strength to steer a boat that large. The rudder could also be controlled by auto-pilot; cruise control for the high seas!

But the biggest difference by far was the fact that this boat had a total of 3 sails - the mainsail, a genoa and a gennaker. We started out with just the mainsail rigged, and using the motors to maneuver ourselves out of the harbour, but once clear, relied completely on the wind.

Well, to cut a long story short, we had a great early afternoon - walking around the top of the boat, learning the ropes and the winches. I really enjoyed the experience. But around 4 in the evening, it started getting cloudy and the wind completely stopped. For a few minutes we were completely motionless. Even when we rigged the gennaker, there was hardly any lift or drag generated, and we stayed put. Meanwhile, the clouds had been creeping up, and we started feeling a slight drizzle.

That drizzle suddenly and dramatically escalated into a full scale rainstorm, and over the next five minutes, visibility dropped to 20 meters, lightning nearby took out our depth gauge, and we had to scramble to pull down and stow the sails (lest the wind and rain catch them and the boat capsize), start the motors and try and find our way back home.

By now the rain was penting down, and for us sitting up top in our thin vests or t-shirts, it got very wet and painful very fast. Most of the crew (us!) took refuge in the dry cabin below while a couple of adventurous souls and the captain stayed up top. Myself? I chickened out for a while, but then returned up top.

We eventually did find land, and the rain did ease up slowly, but for about 30 minutes, it was quite scary - with thunder all around, and bolts of lightning threatening to strike us every minute. The fact that the mast was one solid piece of metal did nothing to ease our minds :)

And when we pulled back into the dock and were nice and tied up, all heaved a sigh of relief. It was scary, but a really exhilarating adventure. Time for me to restart my sailing lessons and move on.

Anyone with a spare boat to sell?