B Squad Sailing Expedition

A couple of B-Squad parents, together with the Club's sailing staff, organised a sailing expedition for the B-Squadders to the Sembawang beach area. As the Sembawang Park beach was closed for renovations, we decided to beach the craft near the PA Water Ventures (Sembawang) and Bottle Tree Village area.

We had a total of 16 Optimists and 1 Pico (Wen Xin's Father, Eugene). This was accompanied by 3 power boats - Uncle Low's, Monster and a RHIB provided by Yazid for us to beach the parents who were following on board the safety boats.

Uncle Low doing the brief before setting off

The next few photos are of TP sailing towards the destination. We had a nice tailwind with favourable currents so the journey there was fast. Less than 1.5 hours.

The Optimists beached at our picnic lunch venue. We had a nice potluck lunch provided by the parents. A highlight for many of the kids, besides the food, was re-kindling the smouldering ambers of a campfire that was probably not properly extinguised by some campers the night before. It was the first time many of them had seen a campfire, and I suspect many of them learnt the fire making skills from watching Survivor.

Unfortunately, we couldn't stay for too long because the tide was rapidly coming in and the Optimists were starting to drift away. After a quick group photo, we were off again, back to the Club. The sail back was challenging, with barely any wind and with the current against us.

Eventually, we decided to tow the sailors back as we were not making much progress. The kids thoroughly enjoyed being towed back as well as they were getting restless with the lack of wind.