LAKE RUA = SAILING

Hi Guys! Last week Rimu Class went sailing. We drove by bus to Lake Rua, and had an amazing time.

This is me recount:

Sailing @ Lake Rua

Last Friday, we all huddled around in the classroom. Our classroom was buzzing with excitement and nervousness. Everyone was in mufti, and we all inspected each other’s outfits.

We were going sailing. Some of us were looking out of our classroom window and gazing at the bus we were going to be travelling in. Carb Break. The teacher announced that this morning we were going to be able to make our own carb breaks, since it would be too hard for one person to make them and hand them all out; we didn’t have enough time anyways.

I made a peanut butter and margarine sandwich, but not with exaggerated amounts of spreads like I would usually do it. After I had enjoyed my sandwich, my friends and I wandered around for a while, until we were called to the mat by the teachers. We were all excited, but we made sure to keep quiet, because the only reason we would be waiting around would be because we were holding up the teachers.

The teachers of our class explained the rules and expectations. Sunscreen was compolsory, sadly. I really wasn’t sure why kids don’t like sunscreen actually, including me. All sunscreen was, was something that protected you from burns, or even cancer. But we seemed to be anaware of that; when the teachers called out that we needed to wear sunscreen, a wave of groans spread around the classroom.

The teachers ignored this of course, they weren’t going to get involved with something so pathetic. When all of the rules were explained and the teachers made sure that they were drilled into our heads, we were allowed to line up by our school gates. It was all real now, and I was sure that we were all wondering how we were going to go. We all imagined or remembered (the ones who remembered were the ones who were fortunate enough to go last year) the glistening water, and the beautiful surroundings, mostly trees, and blue skies.

Once we had stopped day-dreaming, we walked out of the gates. The bus was huge, or should I say… Ginormous! Considering the size of our class though, the bus had to be big. We climbed in, fascinated at the comfortable-looking seats, the television at the front, and the length of it! We walked down the aisle, wide-eyed. I sat down near the back, and my best friend, Grace, sat down next to me. I made sure I had everything, including my watch (since I had lost my Fitbit on wellington camp, I sure didn’t want to lose my apple watch!), and then I noticed something missing. “My bag,” I turned to my friend, “My towel…” I included. It seemed that I had left my plastic bag with a towel in it; It was inside!

I looked around, panicked, and then pushed past my friend and told the teacher about my ‘mistake’. There was a little bit of babbling on, and then we decided that I should just sprint back to get it.

After I had got my towel, we were off. We went down a rural area, and even went past my friend’s house, and that caused the whole bus into histerics. “Piper!” we all yelled, but of course, we knew she wouldn’t hear us… There wasn’t much road to go down, just grass, trees, and we even went past the Christchurch airport, and after that, we took at turn. The bus driver slowed down and that’s when everyone knew we were where we needed to be. Lake Rua.

After that (discovering we were at our destination), we thought we just had to go around a bend of a sand driveway. We were wrong. The bus was moving, and reasonably fast. We all saw the small hill. The bus was going up the hill, and before we knew it, it was going down!

We all screamed of delightment and fear. Then we saw it. The lake, it was glistening!

The sun reflected off the lake; it was moving steadily and slowly. Trees surrounded the beautiful lake and it almost looked unreal. We saw the instructors and they were standing behind the ‘boats’. We all rushed out of the bus, some of us helping the teachers get some of the equipment out of the car, some of us not. We gazed at the boats, not yet set up.

There were chairs set up, and tarpolans. We placed our bags on the blue tarpolans; it looked like a sea of stranded bags in the sea. I gazed at the bags for a second, and then turned around, to see the instructors lined up. “Hi guys…” One old (but not extremely old), and tall man said; I got the vibe that he didn’t want to be where he was then, and he sighed. Then he blurted out a couple of questions, and started doing that thing that adults do to little kids: Like expecting us to finish his sentence for him. For example: “And this is called the…” and then someone says the last word.

And the WORST thing was that he did it with every sentence! It got EXTREMELY annoying and that’s when I started not to listen. Ugh I thought, and I just wanted to get on with sailing. We were taught how to rig the boats, and how to sail. Once we had done one step, we had to go back to the instructors. It was extremely slow the whole morning, and I got really tired and impatient.

Eventually, we went to the lakefront and we met the instuctors there.

I got on the boat. “3, 2, 1!”, and they pushed the boat forward. It just as hard learning to sail as a chicken to fly. “AghHhh!” I screamed as the boat tipped one way, nearly throwing me into the water. “Just go this way!” “Just go that way!” I heard everyone screaming and laughing, but thing was, I wasn’t finding it funny. The instructor came on the boat with motor on the back, and drove me back to shore.

We watched everyone have their turn, and when I had my second turn, I nearly ran over some ducklings, which made me scream of guilt.

We had an amazing day, and we all had lots of fun. I hope I go again someday!