It has been awhile since I last updated on activities. Yesterday, my friends and I went up to Sanctuary Cove Marina, about half an hour's drive away. We were going there to celebrate a friend's birthday, but he did not know what we have planned. He thought we were just going there to eat a nice buffet (decoy). We had actually planned a boat trip, where we hire a small boat for half a day, and sail along the scenic river.
The boat is called a 'party craft', which fits all 8 of us comfortably. It even comes with a BBQ pit! The owner gave us a brief rundown on how to manuvoer the boat, and off we went!
It was supposed to be a nice and relaxing sunny afternoon for us, getting tanned, eating and drinking. We started off well, each of us taking turns to take the wheel. We were planning to go to a nice beachy area about an hour away, park there and start cooking. Now comes the malu part, when this friend was driving the boat, he accidentally went off course, and we were sort of chugging along in a sandy and shallow part of the river. Thankfully no real damage was done to the propeller, just some scratches.
Awhile later, a funny beeping sound came out from somewhere. Not knowing what it was, my friend turned off the engine. He tried to start the engine again, but it just didn't want to. As we were rather near a deserted island, the current slowly swept the boat onto the shore. My friend and me had to get off the boat to push it back into deeper waters, the water was dirty and full of algae and weeds, quite icky. I got wet from the belly button down. =(
The motor still refuses to start, we thought we chui-ed the engine. Eventually called the owner for help, which he say he will try to find someone to come find us (yes, we were lost also). After sometime, we decided to try again, this time I pushed the boat til I was chest deep in water, and the motor started! -_-
We were off, on our way again, but decided to forgo going to the nice beach, as we spent quite a bit of time fixing the motor and may not make it back in time. We drove up and down the river aimlessly, looking for an alternative place. We saw this small beach where people were fishing and swimming and decided to go there. We were thinking of docking the boat on the beach, but decided against it. We stopped the boat in between many other bigger boats and threw the anchor down. But the anchor line was so long that the boat continued drifting with the current, and we were heading straight for another boat! We panicked a bit, but the driver didn't really know how to manuvoer the boat properly too. So in the end we crashed into the other boat. Hehe.
It was just a small bump, luckily the owner was not around. At this time, most of the people at the beach were looking at us, probably laughing. We decided to make a quick scoot from the crime scene. But the torment has not finished. Our anchor was entangled with the other boat's anchor line. Gosh, what else can go wrong! In the end, one of us jumped into the water to try to free our anchor. It took a considerable and coordinated effort from everybody to finally free our boat.
Scoot!
At this time, we were all quite tired already, and were thinking what else can possibly happen. Haha. We rode up and down the river aimlessly again (seems like that is the only thing we can do right), cooked some chicken wings and hot dogs, which turned out charcoal burnt. Happy-ness.
We decided to return the boat early, and head back my friend's house to cook the rest of the food. Not before another embarrassing incident though. I crashed the boat into the jetty when parking. Haha. I was already going very slow, but at the crucial moment, somehow could not engage the reverse gear to stop the boat. I bumped metal to metal at the jetty with a loud "PONG", just then a group of people walked past and one of them commented "not a very talented driver eh". Haha.
We went to our usual hangout place to cook dinner, and ordered puff crust pizza too, which tastes rather like prata.
We celebrated friend's birthday with cake and champagne.
What a weekend! More photos are in my friends' camera, will try to get it and post them next time.
What a weekend indeed, it has been more than 2 days since i last slept. I was trying to get my assignment started on Saturday afternoon, worked on it through the night til Sunday morning. Went for the boat trip and dinner, reached home at about 10pm. Continued working on the report til this morning, which I finally finished at 6.30am. Went to bathe and prepared for school, as I have 7 hours straight of lessons from 8am to 3pm.
Rrrrrrrright. It has been a long 54 hours. Time for bed. =)
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