Date: Oct 11, 2025
Weather: Sunny, mercilessly sunny
Waters: Choppy on the way to the usual spot, calmer near the fish farms
On board: C, A, J2, R and Pudding
It's been nearly three months since our last outing. After this long while, we had three first-timers today on this boat, which we acquired in early 2025: J2 and R - back after 13 months in the US - and Pudding, the family dog who famously loathes water, especially when there's this much of it around.
J2 and R's last time on a family boat outing was in 2022, shortly before we sold our quarter-share in the Salty Lobster, the boat we used only once (at the most, twice) before selling the share. I realise now that I didn't blog about our very short-lived ownership of that boat, but more on this later.
J2 and R were raring for the boating life again, and slid back into it like three years hadn't passed.
As for Pudding (catch up with his antics on Instagram, where he is pudding_thegoldengod), there was some debate about whether we ought to include him because it was looking to be a scorcher of a day, not fun when you are in a fur coat you can't take off, and also because Little Wanderer has only a small bimini and not much shade aside from that.
In the end, we brought him along because the alternative was for him to spend the day alone at home. We needn't have worried. The boy was fairly comfortable on board! He left paw prints on the seats and the bow-rider section of the boat, where he planted himself with A and R.
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| Pudding spots C and R on the dock, carrying boating supplies. |
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| With his favourite people in the family, he smiles. He's been happy since their return to Singapore six weeks ago. |
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| Father and son, captain, co-captain. |
We anchored at our usual spot near the Lim Chu Kang fish farms, turned up a selection of yacht rock, and broke open beers and Prosecco to wash down our sandwiches and the Oktoberfest foods J2 and R brought along.
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| Yum! |
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| "Chilling" seems an odd word to use here because it was blazingly hot. We were sunburned to some degree by the end of this outing. Dogs don't tan or burn. They just pant. |
We gave the dog melted ice and a gel bandana which had been soaked in iced water. That's him wearing it in the photo above.
A managed to get some pleasing portraits of the family.
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| R, ever the photogenic one. |
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| Reminds me of Barack. |
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| Thirty years down. |
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| This shot was by R. J2 in what he called his marine palette. |
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| This is the tee we got made for the family, with an accurate line drawing of LW, a Sea Ray SPX 210. |
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| Pudding rested his paw on R's leg on the homeward journey, like he needed assurance of her presence. |
We took on a 25% share of the vessel - my memory of its make and model are now foggy - and were to have berthed it at One Degree 15 marina, but with it being the Covid period, many vessels big and small in the marina weren't being taken out much.
We couldn't get a berth for it to even begin in earnest our turn-taking with the other three owner-parties (mostly couples). One of the couples offered us his berth, which came with his condo unit in Sentosa, with the berth being accessible to the main part of the marina and the open sea beyond.
This was fine until we found that we had to wait a long time for the condo's lock-keepers to decide to raise the locks to release our boat into the main part of the marina. We were kept waiting at least 45 minutes on our trip out, and another 45 on the way back in.
And then there was the issue of navigation out of the narrow channel after passing the lock. It frayed the nerves.
This wasn't tenable for us, who already find our weekend hours so precious. It didn't seem like a berth in the main marina would become available any time soon, so we exited from our share.
We went three years boatless, until we got Little Wanderer from Eric of SGBoating. He had kept this brand-new boat in storage through Covid, sans engine, and gave it to us at a good price.
And just like that, we were back in the boating life again.
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