Sebana Cove

Whether it’s on forums, blogs, books, or Instagram, one of the most common tips when learning to sail is to “just go down to the local sailing club and ask a member to take you out”. Learning on other people’s boats has a number of advantages - it’s cheap, low-commitment and provides a huge learning experience to see someone else in command of a pretty complex machine. At least - that’s the advice and theory!

As it happens we completed our Competent Crew course when our son was one, and since having a second child we’ve struggled with the commitment of getting out on the water. Precious time at the weekend was prioritised with spending time with the kids. (Good excuse, I hear you say!) I suppose we didn’t throw ourselves into this part of the journey as we were hesitant to invest heavily in joining a sailing club, which is not a low-cost activity in Singapore. I think one of the differences to our approach is that we are not pure sailors or “in it for the sailing”. Sure, it’s our means of transport as well as our home, but travel is the priority.

Either way, we headed the advice and put our names and (albeit unattractive) experience bio on the crew board at Changi Sailing Club. We had a few enquiries for racing; a regular commitment which was far from ideal. But at some point we came across Captain Derek of s/v Blue Eagle (a 37ft ketch) - he was simply looking for folk to help him take his boat out on a gentle cruise. I was unable to attend the first few offers, but then an opportunity came up for my first sail. Rather than a short amble around the Straits of Singapore it was an overnight trip to Sebana Cove in Malaysia. What a great first trip! I promptly accepted, having next to no idea what to expect.

Derek had two other crew members on the trip - a father and son, Francis and Roy. They had some sailing experience between them and Francis knew a lot about Changi Sailing Club. We met at the club on Saturday morning and swiftly head off at 12pm towards Malaysia. It’s a fascinating area on the north-east tip of Singapore, with lots of land reclamation and huge container ships. Derek had us rotating at the helm and I certainly learnt a lot about passage planning through Derek’s tales of trips through the Straits of Malacca. However, exiting Singapore requires a seemingly amateur manoeuvre of “hovering” in the waters off the coast whilst waiting for customs to come and clear us and the boat out. Fortunately we weren’t bobbing along for too long and handed over our documents via the formal fishing net. :)

It took about 5hrs to reach the mouth of the river in Johor, before motoring through the mangroves up to Sebana Cove. Clearing in through customs was another altogether different experience. Unlike an airport with long and organised queues, you almost have to wake up the customs officer / harbourmaster and drag them to the border to complete the formalities! Certainly all a good learning curve - things happen much slower than the fast-paced life of Singapore.

Sebana Cove is quite a lovely protected marina, but there are some dilapidated boats with a quiet sense of their busy days well and truly behind them. Still, not a bad place to arrive, with a swimming pool, nice restaurant and a well earned beer. One of the many benefits to sailing with such an experienced skipper is the time off the boat as well, when you have chance to absorb all of the small yet meaningful tidbits of advice.

The following day after a slow start we headed back to Singapore. At times with barely any wind we certainly got used to “beating” as we tacked up past the huge reclamation land area making slow but steady progress. It was certainly a great way to learn and get familiar with tacking. Heading back and picking up the mooring buoy I couldn’t help but recall all of the super advice I had received in the past 48 hours. The practicalities of managing a boat, let alone sailing one, seemed to be very real. When you are learning “lesson-style” it is not always easy to apply bookwork to routing a passage or steering a real course. But this was real sailing. What a pleasure to sail on s/v Blue Eagle. I hope to have a number of opportunities with Derek again before we leave Singapore for good.

So, if I could give any advice, it wouldn’t be too dissimilar to the advice I’ve received! Go to your local club and ask around for opportunities to learn - it’s a game changer.

-Ben