Friday, December 16, 2005
Caste Away
Yesterday, I got close to being cast away. Me and a bunch of army friends decided spend our off day windsurfing. Well, as it's my 3rd time surfing and it so happened that there were more noobs that day, the instructor there decided to give me a 5 square meters sail and its board. It's a grave mistake... The sail caught wind extremely easily and was so god damn heavy and hard to uphaul. The direction of the wind that day was really very hard to determine as it seemed that wind was coming from more than 1 direction and man you should have seen the choppy waves and the offshore wind that reminded me of typhoon in Taiwan. Totally engrossed in trying to control the sail and doing some running and the fact I was short-sighted without spectacles and all my friends were constantly within sight, I had no idea I was being cast away. I thought I was only like 2 to 3 breakwaters from my launching point and after a few futile attempts of trying to sail back to the shore, I realised that it's impossible given my skill and the wind that day. Friends around me were all exhausted just like me and after quite some time, we gave up and started to paddle back. That's when we realised that we were way too tired to even paddle back. We had no idea how far we had drifted away and how long we had been surfing. Somehow the time seemed to pass slowly and the distance from our launch points seemed very short. I keep emphasising about the distance because you will know why later. After quite some time of paddling, I suddenly saw someone coming towards me in a bum boat. And the lamest thing I could say was "Yes?" It did not occur to me that guy was out on a rescue mission! We had been out into the sea for way passed the time! So we boarded the boat and thought we would reach the Sea Sports Club in no time. We were so wrong! We just stared at each other in amazement as the boat kept travelling forward. We were to my estimation about 3 to 4 km away from the club meaning more than 10 breakwaters! Oh my god! I could not help but kept wanting to laugh at the very thought itself! Actually I think that rescuer also wanted to laugh but he was also too pissed at the same time. I swore I thought the club was just at most 100 to 200 m away. Yes you may think it's too exaggerating but when you were on the sea you really can make such mistakes! What's more I was without spectacles... Luckily in the end we did not have to pay for the boat service when it's supposed to cost 30 bucks and also the overtime charges... The guys were really nice about it... Oh yah, Mr. Wei Jie and Chen Chen were danger-conscious enough to have started paddling back towards the shore early though in the end they still had to walk really far carrying their board and sail back while me and Tecky and Kester were the 3 cocksters who thought since everyone which meant the 3 of us were within sight we should be pretty near the club. The fact is the 3 of us drifted together! It's so damn funny after the whole incident when we talked about it... Next time I shall be more careful with my judgements...
My mind's unweaving / 7:55 PM
