Stayed up late doing "research" last night on the web. Ended up so tired that after arriving at Kallang this morning, I was still sleeping in the car. Thank God, I could still sleep in class until about 10. As it gets closer to our passing out date, we are getting more and more slack.
Somehow, my lack of sleep at night is often made up by lots of breaks and lots of sleep time during the day. =)
So today I had a sortie, that saw me and half the squad go out to sea. We made a grave mistake initially by actually forgetting to bring along 250 rounds of 7.62mm bullets. SSI Ramli was so upset that he decided to confine us to like 9 o'clock. He said that should such a thing really happen in future, we'd all be in CID being interrogated and under investigation.
The sortie was great. The whole bunch of us managed to use the Command Boat. Stocked with 15 trainees and 5 teachers, it was rather crowded on that small but rather stylish vessel. SSI Ramli gave us all the opportunity to try the radar, navigation, chart plotting and a whole slew of other classified equipment and we were all allowed to man the HELM of the command boat for 10 minutes each! Of course, under proper supervision.
My steering was ok. Not that great, but I realised how sensitive a boat actually is to the way the rudder is placed. My rudder was only 5 degrees off center and within seconds I had deviated 30 degrees off course! We had alot of fun navigating in the crowded Anchorage areas within the Port Limits. Of course, none of us except Atek had the pleasure of crusing faster than 10 knots. Atek somehow managed to quietly push it faster to about 20 knots when we were near the sea of Changi Naval Base.
It's fun. To be able to rock on the sea from Kallang to Marina to East Coast to Changi and finally near to the end of the Singapore Territorial Waters. The weather was great! Bright sunshine coupled with a 20 knots crusing speed gave the impression of being in Australia for a while. Its like being baked by the sun but yet not feeling hot all over.
The weather turned dark towards the end of the day and we all laughed at how seasick Poh Yong was. Its a good thing that he didn't actually "merlion" today. He just ended up sitting on the deck of the ship with a life jacket on, whilst some of us waited for the "special moment" which never came.
I cut my finger opening my lunch packet today. I never knew that aluminium foil can be SO SHARP! I cut it quite deep and it bled for while. It still hurts. Sigh. I wonder how come I always get injuries on a ship.
The end of the sortie saw me trying to tie the Stern Rope of the boat to the jetty. I was really bad. Put my fingers in grave danger. My instructor warned me to be more careful the next time round lest I get my fingers permanently crushed. The focr the the boat exerts is incredible. I tied the rope the the deck and the ship was still tugging at it violently producing a characteristic "tak tak tak tak" sound - sound of impending snap. I have to be more careful when handling ropes in future.
The day ended quite well as SSI Ramli didn't confine us. He initially wanted us to sing him a song to get our "sin" forgiven! But he scapped the idea later. Bus 16 and Bus 106 all came exactly on time, so I reached home my earliest ever - 6.25 from work this whole few months.
Somehow, my lack of sleep at night is often made up by lots of breaks and lots of sleep time during the day. =)
So today I had a sortie, that saw me and half the squad go out to sea. We made a grave mistake initially by actually forgetting to bring along 250 rounds of 7.62mm bullets. SSI Ramli was so upset that he decided to confine us to like 9 o'clock. He said that should such a thing really happen in future, we'd all be in CID being interrogated and under investigation.
The sortie was great. The whole bunch of us managed to use the Command Boat. Stocked with 15 trainees and 5 teachers, it was rather crowded on that small but rather stylish vessel. SSI Ramli gave us all the opportunity to try the radar, navigation, chart plotting and a whole slew of other classified equipment and we were all allowed to man the HELM of the command boat for 10 minutes each! Of course, under proper supervision.
My steering was ok. Not that great, but I realised how sensitive a boat actually is to the way the rudder is placed. My rudder was only 5 degrees off center and within seconds I had deviated 30 degrees off course! We had alot of fun navigating in the crowded Anchorage areas within the Port Limits. Of course, none of us except Atek had the pleasure of crusing faster than 10 knots. Atek somehow managed to quietly push it faster to about 20 knots when we were near the sea of Changi Naval Base.
It's fun. To be able to rock on the sea from Kallang to Marina to East Coast to Changi and finally near to the end of the Singapore Territorial Waters. The weather was great! Bright sunshine coupled with a 20 knots crusing speed gave the impression of being in Australia for a while. Its like being baked by the sun but yet not feeling hot all over.
The weather turned dark towards the end of the day and we all laughed at how seasick Poh Yong was. Its a good thing that he didn't actually "merlion" today. He just ended up sitting on the deck of the ship with a life jacket on, whilst some of us waited for the "special moment" which never came.
I cut my finger opening my lunch packet today. I never knew that aluminium foil can be SO SHARP! I cut it quite deep and it bled for while. It still hurts. Sigh. I wonder how come I always get injuries on a ship.
The end of the sortie saw me trying to tie the Stern Rope of the boat to the jetty. I was really bad. Put my fingers in grave danger. My instructor warned me to be more careful the next time round lest I get my fingers permanently crushed. The focr the the boat exerts is incredible. I tied the rope the the deck and the ship was still tugging at it violently producing a characteristic "tak tak tak tak" sound - sound of impending snap. I have to be more careful when handling ropes in future.
The day ended quite well as SSI Ramli didn't confine us. He initially wanted us to sing him a song to get our "sin" forgiven! But he scapped the idea later. Bus 16 and Bus 106 all came exactly on time, so I reached home my earliest ever - 6.25 from work this whole few months.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home