Yup, I'm finally back from the 5 days OBS course! Besides having quite a bad rope burn, i didn't suffer from much injuries except for minor cuts. luckily i only got the rope burn on the last day, if not it would have been quite troublesome.

Well, so the highlight of this programme was a 3 day sailing expedition out in the sea. we sailed from ubin to pasir ris then to seletar and back to ubin. It was really fun though I still prefer the assault boat which could go much faster than a cutter as it uses an OBM. Nevertheless, it was still a very enjoyable expedition with a 'life-threatening' storm on the 2nd day. anyway, we were all divided into 3 groups and mine was called nehru with 12 of us, namely, huiqing, tiffany, yipei, xiuhuan, weilin, junkai, ben, kelvin, joseph, vincent and I.

It started to pour soon when we entered the onimous stormy zone and we were still out in the open sea then. The slightly heavy drizzle quickly crescendoed into a torrential rain, with raindrops hitting on us like hailstones and visibility dropped drastically to a short 10m radius. we couldn't locate the other 2 cutters and were all alone. We had to hoist down the main sail but the strong wind prevented us from doing so even when there were 4 guys down there pulling it. Lightning struck, and 4 of us exclaimed in shock and we could feel the charges. To make things worse, our cutter kept tilting at a precarious position and we had to keep trimming it by all running to the port side, hoping that we could tilt it back with our weight. The girls also used their might to jack in the main sail. Knowing that we couldn't sail against this horrendous storm, our instructor decided to anchor the cutter. Being better at the anchor (cos i was from 35sce), i quickly asked jun kai to help me and the anchoring process was much harder that before. with the really strong currents hitting against my rope, i couldn't feel whether my anchor had touched the seabed and it was really hard to have a firm groip, but luckily we still managed to anchor the cutter quickly. All of us were instructed to put on our poncho and lift our legs above the floorboard. (guess cos the charges reside at the surface of all objects). we were cold, hungry and scared. Honestly, I was quite afraid cos it was my first time out at sea experiencing a storm, and I actually felt the lightning for the first time in my life. Said my prayers, and luckily everything went fine.

I was really impressed by how all of us handled this predicament together. We were all trying to save each other by taking the initiative to do so many things in order to keep afloat. The girls did not panic, instead, they used all their might to stable the sail and even encouraged each other that this was 1 that we would all brave through together. I guess optimism really plays a huge part here in boosting our morale to surmount this problem together. It might have been a different situation if all of us were thinking in a pessimistic way. As much as I was afraid of this storm then, I was really glad it happened cos it really bonded us together. and this incident is an epitome of team spirit in a crisis. We couldn't have been safe if all of us were not working together. Literally, we managed to brave through this storm together.

Well, that night we slept on the wet cutter which left me musing with weehong while we were doing our sentry duty.

and so after all these 5 days, I would say that it was really a good experience with these DSTA frens and it had really brought all of us closer! there're 12 of us going to imperial and i've already made really good friends with some of them, ppl like kelvin, ben and jun kai. i would love to fly with them on 3rd Oct. at least I wun be so sad when I leave for studies. =)