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Not smooth-sailing, but I wouldn’t have it any other way: Evelyn Tan

SINGAPORE — Earlier last year, my husband Darren and I took the family on our highly-anticipated sailing trip to Phuket, then to Koh Samui. Lest you think the six-month-long expedition was a pampered vacation where we were waited on hand and foot, it wasn’t. We were quite on our own, self-sufficient, and deliberately so.

SINGAPORE — Earlier last year, my husband Darren and I took the family on our highly-anticipated sailing trip to Phuket, then to Koh Samui. Lest you think the six-month-long expedition was a pampered vacation where we were waited on hand and foot, it wasn’t. We were quite on our own, self-sufficient, and deliberately so.

It has been Darren’s dream to sail since his childhood days, and mine to see the world. So when the opportunity came for us to get our own vessel, we started living on board, taking courses with RYA (Royal Yachting Association) and basically doing everything we could to get our kids and ourselves ready for the adventure to come.

The vessel that was “home” for us since we bought it four years ago, was not luxurious by any account.

The 40-foot catamaran has three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a galley (fancy boat-term for kitchen) and an outdoor dining area — all squeezed into the space of a studio apartment. The six of us, together with our crew member, Victor, actually survived living in it.

Of course for little Elliott, our youngest and aged two at the time, a little more space to run around would have been more ideal. That, was one of the reasons why we decided not to venture beyond Thailand for now.

I remember that on one occasion, we saw land after having sailed for five days straight. Elliott was so excited he walked up and down the sofa, jumping and shouting excitedly: “ We’re here! We’re here!”

That was when we knew that a trip to Okinawa would have to wait.

PIRATES? NO?

It’s a wonderful feeling to be able to chase and live your dreams, but life is not always a bed of roses while you are doing that. When we told people of our plans to sail with our kids in tow, the first question well-meaning friends and family asked was: “Are you sure it’s safe? Are there not pirates around? What if you meet with bad weather?”

Between Darren and myself, I have to say I am the more down-to-earth, play-it-safe kind of person, while he is the visionary (aka dreamer); but that’s how we started our relationship in the first place, and why we eventually embarked on this sailing plan. According to basic PSLE Science 101 (Ahem, I know the syllabus, my 12-year-old daughter is sitting for her PSLE this year), unlike poles attract!

And when almost 99 per cent of all the people you talk to remind you that there are unknown dangers lurking out there in the sea, the more likely you are going to think that they are likely possibilities.

Which mother out there would send their kids to suffer the consequences of their self-ambition? Frankly, I got really fearful. I confided my fears and concerns with Darren, my free spirit, full of faith and the spirit of adventure. His view was calmer: There’s nothing to worry about when plenty before us have completed such journeys many times over.

I’ll spare you the details of all that happened in between, and our numerous conversations about potential accidents out at sea and what we would do in each scenario. But what we did resolve to do, was to speak with others who had done it before (who we were able to find, thankfully), and pray and hope for the best!

My epiphany of our planning journey? When you set your mind to doing something your heart tells you to, there will be murmurs from differing perspectives attempting to get you to consider all angles before you actually do it.

While it’s good to consider these arguments so you can be prepared, don’t ever, ever, let them become such a distraction that you lose sight of your original goal, or to let them cause so much fear and anxiety that you lose heart and give up trying.

And the best part of the story is, after all that anxiety about encountering unsavoury characters at sea, we didn’t even see any other boats at all. It was quite lonely, but therapeutic!

CHALLENGES AT SEA

I had never thought of myself as a “fair-weathered” friend, but on this trip I was proven so. When the going got tough, I got off the “co-pilot” seat, left Darren to hold the fort and took to lying down in bed — what else can you do when the lolling waves and thunderous seas threaten to send tumultuous torrents of your earlier lunch out of your body?

On our way up the Gulf of Thailand, we met with the most horrible experience of our lives — six storms back-to-back in 24 hours, sending our boat rocking to and fro, up and down on 5m-high waves. Obviously, the kitchen was then closed with the chef out of action, and hungry kids and crew had to make do with cereal for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The interesting thing I observed in this incident was how resilient the kids were. While I was sitting in dread, hoping for the storm to pass quickly and worrying about the disaster that might befall us with the next crashing wave, never for once did the kids come to us to ask us if they would be all right.

They took everything in their stride and trusted that their daddy and mummy would get them through. That was a truly humbling learning experience.

AHOY THERE, DOLPHINS

With so many days being out at sea, there was one area of our general knowledge that has improved: That of the sea creatures we encountered — both dead and alive.

We woke up one morning where we were anchored to the worst stench imaginable. Somehow in the night, a turtle — dead and bloated — had floated near us. The children talked about what could have caused its death and reflected on the effects of human being’s actions on the environment.

One of our kids put it down to old age that killed the goodly-sized animal. Another hypothesized it was the plastic it must have eaten (apparently, plastic does not get digested and the animal will then feel full and not feed, eventually dying of starvation).

Seeing the children come alive with true understanding of what they had learnt from books or from school, more than made up for the discomfort felt during the storm the day before.

Another highlight of our trip was our encounter with wild dolphins along the Straits of Malacca. We had been told that dolphins were often sighted along the stretch of the straits but we weren’t sure if we would be lucky enough to have a sighting.

We didn’t see any on our way to Phuket, but just as we were giving up hope of seeing one on the way back, they appeared next to our boat just a day before we reached Singapore. We were thrilled beyond words!

There are so many things that we are thankful for in those six months of our lives — protection from up above, memories that will last us a lifetime and the experience of hands-on learning for the kids, beyond four walls and beyond books. If anybody were to ask if we would have done it any differently, I would say “yes”. I would spend more time on the seas and less time on worrying. In fact, that is the attitude I am going to adopt for the next big storm up ahead — PSLE preparation.

 

Evelyn Tan, an artiste managed by MediaCorp, is married to actor-host Darren Lim (turned captain of their boat chartering business, Ximula Sail Pte Ltd). They have four children: Kristen, 12, Jairus, 10, Way, 8, and Elliott, 3.

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