These were the terms we learnt during May Monthly meeting!
The story begins: On Saturday morning we arrived at the Royal Selangor Yacht Club at Port Klang. Ai Li, the girl who once sailed for Malaysia and who is still engaged in sailing competitions gave us a brief introduction to sailing. We were introduced to various terms, the structure of the boat, taught us about the safety precautions and the various roles of the crew on board. Apparently, we do not need a cert to sail. Here’s a quick review:
Boat structure:
Safety precautions:
Watch out for the boom (The hard steel underneath the main sail)!
If your friend falls off the boat, don’t jump in as an attempt to save them. Instead, just stare and keep an eye on them while someone else throws in the float. Laugh if you must.
Crew on Board:
There's the skipper, bowman, maintrimmer, porttrimmer, starboard trimmer, and my favourite, the ballast (the person that balances the boat by running or climbing from one side of the boat to another)!
Anyway, after Ai Li's brief introduction, we had lunched and met out skippers. They were expatriates 'orang putih' that happened to owned some of the boats that we sailed on. There were 30 Raleigh-ians sailing on 5 different boats. Some big, some smaller. By 1.30 p.m. noon, we left Shih Chung and Zhi Yong Jr to watch over our bags and we were off to sea!
We got to man the boat! It was hands on with the basic stuff. We learned how to avoid the boom as it swung from one side to another and learned to change the direction of the sails as our boat gradually shifted its direction. Altogether 3 and a half ours at sea (though we can still see land). We also noticed a rainbow like a hallow circling the sun.
Mm...sailing is very much like Raleigh. Unique and fun. An awesome adventure i'd say.
PS: Shih Chung had vowed never to be a bag watcher ever again.
For those of you who would like to know more about sailing and its terms. Here are 2 links:
http://www.asa.com/asa_
http://www.iidolphins.com/
http://www.euphoriasailing.
Cheers,
Bee Li"
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Click here for Group Photo.
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