Nothing in Particular

OBS (Day 3) - 09/01/19

Day 3

I was one of the sea expedition leaders in Day 3. We had to plan the whole expedition as in what time we should wake up and what time we should set sail. We did that the previous night.

According to plan, everyone woke up by 5 am and start unpitching their tents which took about half an hour, as estimated. We then packed our bags for the sea expedition into 2 separate sets: one to be carried to the safety boat which would transport our boats to the campsite, and the other to bring to the kayak. It took about 20 minutes, as planned.

15 minutes was given to have our breakfast, but it was more like 35 minutes to pack our bags and have our breakfast.

I put on the shoes I borrowed from the donated shoes on the shoe rack but turns out it was too small. My feet hurt. Well, looks like I have to wear my normal shoe to the sea. That means that I'll being wearing a wet shoe for trekking the next day!

The OBS bags had to be at the Seaview Parade by 6.30 am and by 6.20 am, people were still loitering at the block. They were all ushered to the parade where 2 watches (Yusof and Keng Swee) went to load the bags onto the safety boats while the other 2 watches (Kurt and Bo Seng) went to carry the kayaks and paddles to the beach.

Since Kurt had an odd number of people now that one person was sent back home, one of us had to take a single kayak. Thank God it wasn't me.

I was the navigator of the sea expedition which meant that I had to be at the front at all times, leading the way. It was damn stressful with people telling you to go faster and later complain that you are going too fast and need to slow down. People kept asking me how much we had covered and when we were going to reach the campsite but the thing is that I had never been to the campsite or seen it before so how was I supposed to know??

We started at around 7.30 am. At the start of the sea expedition, everything was peaceful and the pace was quick. The tides and wind were helping us since they were flooding tides, moving from East to West. However, the tides started to change at around 10 am when it started to ebb and go from West to East.

We kayaked endlessly for hours and hours and it felt like an eternity. The waves were strong and constantly pushed us back. Once you stopped paddling, you would drift backwards and even sideways or diagonally, depending on the direction of wind and tide.

They claimed I disappeared halfway but I navigated for more than half the journey before disappearing. Well, I didn't exactly disappear. One of the instructor boats was trying to drain one of the boats of water when the foam, which keeps the boat afloat when it capsizes, dropped out. Since I was the nearest, my partner, Natalie, and I paddled towards the foam and helped him with it.

And that was how everyone overtook us.

We hitched a ride on the speedboat which splashed quite an amount of water into our cockpit but it was still acceptable in a sense that it won't cause the kayak to sink. As the instructors said, "Since you helped us, we will help you!" Well, we were really far behind because we were helping them.

I started to return to the front. It was quite easy since I was one of the stronger paddlers. There was a temporary navigator who was one of the sea expedition leaders from Keng Swee but they really sucked because he kept falling behind. When the waves were still strong, it pushed the people behind and the navigator also fell behind. I was managed to overcome to waves with my partner and went to the front.

The instructors then told us to stop and wait for the others who got pushed far behind by the waves.

We paddled as hard as we could until the tides changed and about 2 to 3 pm when they started flooding again, going from East to West. The waves actually died down so it was easier to paddle, I guess? But there were still waves which pushed us back. We kept drifting out to sea and had to constantly paddle back. The instructors tried to keep us together by asking us to hold on to their boats and asked others to hold on to the boats holding on to the instructors' boat.

Confusing, I know.

The instructors then stopped interfering and left us. After all, this was our expedition. We lead the way.

We reached the campsite at about 5 pm so that's about 10 hours of kayaking. The other mobile Camp 1 Charlie kayaked the next day and took only 6 or 7 hours. The weather was much more favourable for them.

Everyone got down and started draining the kayaks of water and putting them one side to dry for the Camp 1 Charlie to use. After that, we unloaded the bags. We then had a debrief on the sea expedition as we stood in a circle.

I heard that Camp 1 Charlie trekked from Camp 2 to the campsite which was actually Jelutong Campsite which was a public area and not under OBS. By the time we reached the campsite, Camp 1 Charlie had already pitched their tents.

Anyway, that was one tiring day in the sea.

Oh, did I forget to mention that we had to pee and poo in the sea when we really need to? Okay, never mind. I don't want to spoil your appetite ;)

Anyway, I didn't need the toilet for the whole expedition. I went to the washroom just before leaving and I only drank 500 ml of water the whole journey despite bringing 4L of water along. What? I didn't want to get my shoes wet by getting in the water. 

After the debrief, we all went to pitch our tents. There were actually wild boars in the area. There was a family of at least 8 wild boars there so we were told to put our tents in a circle. Of course, they didn't listen. There was a huge hole there which literally implies, "Hey, wild boar! Here's a huge entrance for you to come in and take our stuff!" And I was facepalming. 

One of the boys' tents in Bo Seng was built beside one of the boys' tents in Kurt. They were supposed to be the tent to fit into the huge "entrance" for the wild boars. They didn't listen.

Night 3

Since Kurt is slow as always, we cooked our dinner in the pot with solid fuels at night again. We cooked bee hoon with Italian chicken something I don't know what it's actually called and I forgot. It was probably meatloaf again. Then there were mixed vegetables in the bee hoon too. 

The food was quite nice anyway. Now for the worst part of all...

1 representative from each tent was asked to go to one of the instructors for a briefing for the sentry duty. As mentioned, there was a family of wild boars at Jelutong Campsite and that's one of the reasons for sentry duty. There was a story of how an OBS backpack was found in the woods 2 days after it was gone. Obviously, it had been taken by wild boars.

In addition, since Jelutong Campsite is a public area, there would be strangers walking around. That's another reason why we had to do sentry duty, which involves us waking up in the middle of the night to patrol. 

Firstly, there was Yusof from 11 pm to 11.45 pm, then there was Keng Swee from 11.45 pm to 12.30 am. Next up was Kurt from 12.30 am to 1.15 am. Then there was Bo Seng from 1.15 am to 2 am. After that, we have to wake up the next tent from Camp 1 Charlie.

We had to wake up in the middle of the night. The night before the day we trek 7 km from Jelutong Campsite to either one of the OBS camps.

Okay.

We woke up at 12.55 am to do our sentry duty and finished at 1.02 am or something. Everything was fine. So we had to wake up the last Kurt tent for sentry duty. 

There were supposedly 3 boys in that tent, but when I went outside the door, I found that the door was zipped open and there were only 2 boys in the tent. I looked at the Bo Seng tent beside that tent and knew what was going on. I woke that tent up and asked for the missing boy who was indeed inside it, sleeping. He told us to wait for 5 minutes but their sentry duty was already over soon.

It took 10 minutes to wake them all up. 

What's worse was that he was the representative of his tent for the briefing of the sentry duty, yet he slept in another tent. We were specifically told not to switch tents and sharing of tents between representatives was not allowed.

Anyway, we just went back to sleep. The next morning, I told the incident to Ben and he had a good talk with that boy.