On the 4th day of our extended
Easter break that had hitherto comprised hanging out by the pool in the
mornings and walking by the beach in the evenings, we signed up for a mangrove boat
tour. All that lolling around had begun to get on my nerves. I wanted a bit of
action.
The boat ride was to start at 2.45 p.m.,
which came hot and blazing. We were on a small speedboat
that looked cool in Bond movies but was actually very hot to sit in given the
lack of shelter. I was impressed by the other family on the boat. The dad, mom
and two well-behaved kids – girl (6) & boy (4) - from Kuwait, all sat
quietly at the prow. It was even hotter in the front, without the tiny shade
that the steering wheel and control panel gave us.
We spent the next hour seeing the most
inane sights ‘Look a crocodile’. ‘Where where?’ I would ask eagerly and he would
point at a rock shaped like one. The only real things we saw were Brahmini
kites swooping into the water to grab chicken skins that the tourist boats had
no business throwing to them in the first place.
When we finally stopped at a floating
restaurant cum fishery farm, I was relieved. The next stop was at a bat cave, that
looked rather creepy. For some reason a nugget of information I had read
somewhere about bats causing rabies kept floating through my head.
The last stop looked the most promising. It
was a secluded beach with only one other tourist boat. The kids had fun
splashing in the water while the dads kept an eye on them. I walked by the
shore, fascinated by the number and variety of shells and scored a few good
ones. Nothing like free trip souvenirs.
By this point, the weather was nice and
cool, my headache had disappeared and I was feeling pretty happy. We got back
on the boat and I enjoyed the cool spray of water on my face.
After a while I realized that the cool
spray of water was becoming a rather strongish spray. After five minutes, the
Kuwaiti family gave a scream and scrambled to the back of the boat. I watched
with disbelief as water began to flood the boat and carried away a couple of
shoes belonging to the other family. The boatman was struggling at the wheels.
Within seconds, we all tightened our life jackets.
I looked around for something to start bailing out the water with and spotted the
plastic trays containing our packed sandwiches which we had not yet had.
Emptying them and handing one to the Kuwaiti mom, I began to bail out the
water. So did she while furiously chanting Islamic prayers. The dads were
holding onto the kids and urging the boatman to do something.
The boatman was a rotund, young man with a
lopsided grin and clearly not capable of handling any sort of crisis. He turned
to us and announced ‘Relax. Relax’ in a manner than suggested he needed to hear
the words himself.
Infact as a group we were behaving rather
well. No one was crying or wailing. All
of us were wearing our lifejackets. We were quietly waiting for instructions,
albeit with furious bailing out of water. For one, we could not yet believe
that there was actually a problem. For another, we were in a busy tourist route
and it would be a matter of time before someone came to our help. We just
needed to get the message across to that someone that we needed to be rescued.
The boatman then gave his next instruction
‘can you call?’
Er.. call who? Maybe this was again an
instruction to himself. In any case, all of us realized that our phones had been
soaked and were no longer working.
‘It is ok. I will call’ the boatman said.
Presumably, it was time to activate the advanced wireless system the boat was
fitted with.
We watched as he pulled out a dinky Nokia
from the 2000s, gave an anguished cry, tossed his head back and cried ‘It is
not working’
I could hear myself think - This was Plan
A? Calling up people on his phone ? Was he shocked that it was wet?
The Kuwaiti mom had a similar look of
disbelief on her face. ‘OK, what is the mechanism to empty the water in the
boat?’
‘Do you have any emergency flares?’ I added
Obviously we knew all the questions but no
one knew the answers.
The boat had stopped by now. The sea was
pretty calm, so no further water seemed to be coming in. Still, the two of us
kept draining out the water.
The Kuwaiti dad spotted another boat. He
barked at the boatman to wave to the boat. The boatman looked a bit hesitant,
like he was worried about losing his job if things got to a point where we had
to be rescued. ‘Was there still a way to restart the boat?’, he seemed to be
thinking. The Kuwaiti dad grabbed a beach towel and began to wave it furiously.
The boatman reluctantly joined him and took the towel and waved it.
The other boat began to make its way to
ours. Thankfully it was completely empty and we could all fit inside, along with
whatever of our possessions we could grab on the way (I smugly noticed that in
our case we had all our belongings packed into a single easy-to-grab bag. Ha)
The boatman was left behind with the boat
though, much to my surprise. Presumably they knew that there was not much
danger.
Infact, many hours later when the moms and
kids had been dispatched to the hotels and the dads were still hanging around
to discuss compensation, the boatman made an appearance smiling sheepishly. He
had conscientiously gotten along whatever stuff had remained behind on the
boat, including the single (and hence useless) shoes that had not floated into
the sea. If only he had been this conscientious when he had attended his
boatman training.
The tour operator refused to assign blame
to the boatman and instead told us the engines had been hit hard by the waves
and failed. Whether the boatman had caused the accident or not (which I rather
suspected he did), he did not have an idea of how to manage after that. It
turned out the boat did have ways to empty extra water and they had emergency
flares on board.
Since it was a large outfit with a
reputation to lose, the general manager flew down the next morning from KL and replaced
our camera and paid us for the phones. So in the end, apart from a slight shock
and some lost phone data, it turned out OK.
That night, several thoughts flashed through my head -
What in case we had capsized into the sea. Our lifejackets were in good condition but it would have been a lot tougher to rescue us if we had drifted apart, as we would have
How did the Kuwaiti mom's make up stay intact through the episode? When we had hugged and parted in the end, I noticed that she looked exactly as she had several hours earlier.
I had spent an entire
five minutes bailing out water from the boat without pause and not felt the
strain on my arms and backs. The Kuwaiti mom, probably my age, had given up
after a while. Clearly, I was
fitter than I thought.
