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Personal Milestone
Friday, 11 April 2008
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Woohoo! I hit a personal milestone yesterday for getting up the pole to spike the spinnaker kite. |
In layman's term, the spinnaker is a large "balloon" sail that we fly in front of the boat, and dropping the sail usually involves the crew on deck pulling in one end of the sail and someone climbing up the pole with a metal spike to release the other end. Due to my fear of heights, I usually never venture anywhere higher than where my feet can’t touch solid stuff. So you can imagine it was quite a big moment for me to be strapped into the harness and be hoisted up into the blue unknown. Oh, and did I mention that the pole was a towering 4m one above the deck?
As a side-note, I’ve also almost created another boat history by spiking the wrong shackle, which would have otherwise sent me flying into the sea instead of the sail. Despite all the prior training and instructions from everyone, the mind just suffered a momentarily lapse of judgment (one of the symptoms of altitude-sickness) and basically blanked out. The image of looking down at the skipper and crew up from the pole, hearing them scream “NO! The OTHER shackle!” shall forever be etched in my memories.
I’ve also realized how wrong I was to initially think that this race was going to be just another case of boring upwind sailing. Having endured the extreme weather conditions and crossed ¾ of the Pacific, we could have been caught in the “been-there-done-that” mentality and imagined Santa Cruz to be just another pit stop before ending our sailing career. Come to think of it now, we have done some unique(ly Singapore) outflanking manoeuvres behind a high-pressure system and got the spinnakers flying in an apparent upwind sail. Other personal “firsts” for me include learning, practicing, and putting to use the timber and rolling hitches all within a few short hours (thanks to Baz and Lih); learning to use the traveller for fine-tuning the sails instead of just seeing it as the danger area to avoid; hearing our national pledge recited by all Singaporeans on deck; etc. Little things nonetheless, but makes the whole sailing experience so uniquely enjoyable. So many new things to learn and experience everyday, such limited time left on board this boat… Sigh, we will miss Uniquely Singapore.
Chee-Yuh (yes, I’ll definitely be back home and reply to you before May)
Uniquely Singaporean |
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