We Are Sailing

Two weeks ago, without Frenchie's company to pay for a taxi drive from Changi Airport to our humble abode, I decided to rough it and re-live my student youth by taking the bus.  That's right, the helpfully signposted, easy-to-understand Singapore bus.  This turned out to be an utter delight as for 70 minutes I was treated to a tour around lots of Singaporean neighbourhoods that I had never seen before, including the 15kms of East Coast Park, a beach stretch happily imported (sand and palm trees) and designed for all your water sports and coastal leisure needs.


There was roller skating (my new favourite), biking, sand-castle building stations, sea kayaking, wake-boarding, kite boarding, wind surfing - all the double-barreled sports you could ever ask for!  There was yet another alternative view of Singapore's only skyline, and what's more, all these things were available with a backdrop of container ships, which Frenchie loves more than any other kind of mass transportation vehicle.  Surely, this was the place for us.

So, forgetting that I was weak, lazy, allergic to sport and had recently retired from the Li Hi lifestyle, I organised a weekend of action packed, seaside fun for Frenchie and I.  First stop was the right car park.  We picked the wrong one, obviously, and were quite disappointed when the National Sailing Centre of Singapore told us they didn't 'do' sea kayaking, but only wind surfing, as this made little sense to us: if a sailing centre does 'surfing', then surely they should do 'kayaking' also, especially if they don't actually do anything with the word 'sailing' somewhere in its double barreledness.

Determined, despite this initial set back, we set off to promenade along at least 5km of the 15km stretch, and a calming, early 20th century voice in my head said, 'how lovely: we've avoided the silly energetic activities, and instead are having a gentle walk along the seafront with our husband.  The clouds are beautiful, the breeze is delightful and all the town's out and about doing family-type things.'

Before I transformed entirely into my late-Victorian self, though, we stumbled across the Mana Mana beach resort, only to discover that we were entirely unequipped for sea kayaking.  Did Frenchie have swimming trunks on?  No.  (Cue re-enaction of the 100 Years War whereby England insists that she told France multiple times that trunks would be a good idea, and France claims not to have heard/understood because England speaks too quietly).  Did either Frenchie or my Li Hi self have a hat to ward off damaging sun rays?  No.  Did I want a new pair of water sports shorts and a Magnum ice cream to throw on the shop floor because Frenchie was treating himself to presents and was not indulging me, his wife, who should be treated at every possible opportunity and on a regular basis?  Yes.

So, having bought the shop's entire stock, and tiptoed away from the quickly melting chocolate splodges, we retired to a food court to sit in our waterproof hats, waterproof shorts, sun block and life jackets to mull over about whether we actually did want to go sea kayaking or not...

Obviously we did, sillies.

Sea kayaking with Frenchie was a lot of fun because he insisted on doing all the paddling, allowing me to lie back, sunbathe and sea swim.  I tried to offer to help, but he was adamant that he could do it all by himself.

Really insistent.

I offered many times to help.
 
At one point, I did have a small panic about the impending Great Shift and tried to swim to one of the container ships and escape to a life of piracy and adventure, but they were too far away and my arms got tired.


Swim, little Ems!  Swim!

This was all so much fun that we vowed to return the next week to re-live Frenchie's outdoorsy childhood by hiring what Frenchie sold to me as a vehicle of great nostalgic wonder and freedom; a boat of delicacy and wind-through-your-hair-ness bound to make me feel like Mrs. Ainslie on a weekend getaway.  This boat was called a Laser, and we booked one for the following week, only to find out that it was a boat of death threats, panic and fear.

Looks so innocent: actually boat of trauma.

In the taxi to the beach, our conversation went a little something like this:

Frenchie: I cannot wait to go sailing.  I 'av loved sailing since I was a leeetle boy.
Me: Me too!  How exciting that I married a man wealthy enough to own a boat!
Frenchie: ... zat is not -

Me: So romantic and charming and handsome and manly!  Sigh  Yes, so happy to have married such a manly man.
Frenchie: ...Yes... a boat...

The conversation whilst getting into the boat, however, went a little like this:

Mana Mana Man: don't touch the boom, please.
Me: but it's about to decapitate me.
Frenchie: don't touch ze boom, Emma.
Me: but - !

Once in the boat

Me: I'm so glad you know what you're doing.  I am pooing my pants.  The boom is out to get me.
Frenchie: ... know what I'm doing?  I don't know what I'm doing.  I 'av not sailed since I was a leeetle boy.

So, turns out that despite the above charming and convincing pose, Frenchie had in fact not sailed for a significant period of time, and so the initial part of the trip was spent with me rupturing a disk in my spine because I was so tense staring unfalteringly at the boom that was bound to swing violently my way at any moment and knock me unconscious into the water where I would get sliced into a thousand pieces by the rudders of other boats and kite surfers.  This paralysis was interspersed with me throwing myself onto all fours in the middle of the boat as Frenchie yelled, 'Get down!  Get down!' at me, like a WW2 officer, whilst I adopted a foetal position, protecting my head as if sheltering from shellfire during a Normandy landing.  On top of this, the boat was quite small, so at the slightest incomprehensible unbalancing, it threatened to capsize and we had to lean back in the removing-skinny-jeans-when-calves-are-a-little-bit-fatter-than-normal pose, or hunch forward in the just-a-few-more-minutes-and-I'm-sure-this-poo-will-want-to-come-out pose.

It was all very stressful (but to be fair, Frenchie did a very good job).

Luckily, we're going back next week and this time, to avoid Frenchie holding the rope between his teeth whilst navigating, I am going to be in charge of the rudder.  That's right.  Me.  The girl who cries when learning how to reverse park or when trying to figure out how aeroplanes get off the ground, or apples fall from trees.

Excited!