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THE OUTWARD BOUND SCHOOL

Outward Bound’s founding mission was to give young seamen the ability to survive harsh conditions at sea by teaching confidence, tenacity, perseverance and to build experience of harsh conditions.

MOTTO: TO SERVE, TO STRIVE AND NOT TO YIELD

The name Outward Bound derives from a nautical expression that refers to the moment a ship leaves the pier. This is signified by Outward Bound’s use of the nautical flag, the Blue Peter (a white rectangle inside a blue rectangle). JF Fuller adapted the Outward Bound motto, “To Serve, To Strive and not To Yield”, from the poem “Ulysses” by Alfred Lord Tennyson. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outward_Bound

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THE OUTWARD BOUND SCHOOL, SINGAPORE (11 June to 2 July 1973)

*LESSONS LEARNT OVER THE COURSE

*Lesson 5: Sometimes, all you can do is pray, so PRAY!

WE WENT OUT ON THE OBS CUTTER.
It was the first, and last, time. It seemed that every watch got only one day in the cutter. Ours would turn out to be the most eventful day of our whole OBS course!

SUDDENLY, THERE WAS A TERRIBLE STORM, AND OUR CUTTER BEGAN TO LEAVE THE MOTORBOAT BEHIND, SO OUR INSTRUCTOR JUMPED ONTO THE CUTTER.

Thank God! We knew nothing about storms at sea or the sailing of a cutter. The instructor, I believe, saved our lives.

IT WAS A TERRIFIC SEA STORM: high waves, mighty winds, darkened sky, the whole works!

Our instructor set the cutter headed towards the open seas. We were in the South China Sea. We kept being blown out to the open sea. We saw nothing as the sky was completely dark. Our cutter sped on and on. The waves tossed us up and down, and sometimes, the sea came in over the side. In our vests, we sat and held onto to anything that could keep us from toppling over. An unspoken dread was falling overboard!

The storm seemed unending. The howling wind made talk impossible, but I could see the person on the other side moving his lips. Yes, he was praying, to which god or gods I knew not.

What else could mere man do, caught in a mighty storm at sea? Pray for mercy from the God that is mightier than any storm! Like him, I began to pray.

Miraculously, the dark clouds parted and the sun shone through! The storm came to an end.

Since then, I have discovered that, in life’s many storms, whether physically or mental or spiritual, sometimes, all you can do is pray, so PRAY!

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This is the new cutter that OBS New Zealand is using.

Saturday splurge: Outward Bound instructors took a group of key sponsors for a spin on the school’s $180,000 new cutter over the weekend. The cutter is christened Sir Woolf, after a founding member of Outward Bound.

Outward Bound’s new cutter was christened with a splash of Marlborough pinot gris at the official naming ceremony at the Anakiwa wharf, in Queen Charlotte Sound, on Saturday.

About 50 sponsors, Outward Bound instructors and their families attended the event, which included a blessing from Te Atiawa kaumatua Graham Grennell.

The Sir Woolf is the second of three new fibreglass cutters which are replacing the old fleet of wooden boats. The boat is named after Sir Woolf Fisher, one of the men who started Fisher and Paykel and a long time supporter of Outward Bound.

School director Rob MacLean said boat designer Tim Barnett had taken the original 1936 design and rebuilt it in modern materials with better safety features.

“It’s a fusion of the old design with new material and techniques, which is a bit of an Outward Bound analogy,” he said.

“The new boats are faster, more stable with better storage, and less maintenance costs – they will probably save us $4000 to $5000 a year.”

The 10-metre boats carry 14 students and up to three staff.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/marlborough-express/news/8776100/Outwards-cutters-bound-for-glory

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Today, OBS Singapore has a modern cutter.

Here is the crew rowing.

IN 1973, THE CUTTER WE USED WAS OLD AND MADE OF WOOD. It was really heavy, so imagine how hard the punishment was: our instructor made us row for almost an hour!

I’ve tried to find a photo of a cutter that looks like the one we had back then, and so far, so bad!

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Next: the JOY of kayaking

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*Lesson 4: Things may look easy but don’t take it easy.

A rope course we were soon introduced to was the Commando Crawl. It looked easy but was not. It was not easy to avoid slipping off the rope, and you needed arm strength to pull yourself along.

Next, we returned across the same rope, using the Monkey Crawl. This was even harder, as some of the others soondiscovered. It was easy to slip off, and you had to hold on tightly to the rope with your hands to avoid hitting the ground.  did not volunteer to go first, so I watched the others, and learnt from their mistakes.

http://www.wilderness-survival.net/rope-installations/one-rope-bridge/

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*Lesson 3: Teamwork and planning are necessary for success.

We had to get over a wall, all of us, leaving no one behind. It was a smooth wooden structure, about 14 feet in height. Even though some planning was necessary to get the last one over, there would have been no problem getting over it except for the fact that we had the fattest person. How could we get this obese 17 year old over it? He weighed about 85kg and he was ALL FAT.

The wall looked something like this.

It was a difficult task.

It took all the other nine of us to get him over. Yes, ALL NINE of us were needed to get the tenth person over..

The first time we did it without planning and couldn’t get the obese boy over.

Then, we planned.

This was how we did it.
1 Two boys got up and sat on the wall, one on each side.
2 A third boy went over the wall, slid down to the other side, and waited.
3 I got onto the wall, and lay on my stomach, facing the way I had come. M arms were stretched out to grab the hands of the obese boy. Meanwhile, the boy on the other side held onto my legs to prevent me from being pulled back over the other side.
4 The two boys on the wall held onto me, also to keep me from being pulled back down.
5 The obese boy was pushed onto the shoulders of FOUR boys. The last person, number 9, pushed his bottom.
6 I grabbed his hands, and yelled, “Now!”
7  The boy behind the obese boy pushed while the boy holding my legs pulled.
8 I was pulled backwards, and the obese boy was pulled over the wall by me, and fell onto me.
9 The remaining boys got over without any difficulty.

It took 20 minutes the first time. After several practices, we got it down to 5 minutes.

The other watches did it within 3 minutes.

We wery slow but, at least, we got across.

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I am not a forward person. Indeed, I am quite laid-back. I don’t volunteer. My stint at the OBS reinforced that aspect of my nature.

*Lesson 2: Never volunteer!

What kinds of people volunteer? All sorts. Some know what to do, having had the experience, so they RUSH to go first. Others want to be seen as capable, or to be helpful, or to show off.

There was an ex-Army guy in our watch. about 22, my age. He was an aggressive person, and wanted very much to be a leader, if not THE leader. Since he wanted this so much, we let him be watch co-leader. Let’s call him Max.

“At Outward Bound the ropes course was originally used in the initial phase of the 26-day course as a tool to assess strength, agility, stamina, and character traits of the students prior to the start of the rigorous Training Expedition. Today, ropes courses are used in all phases of Outward Bound programs for a variety of objectives with all types of populations.”(http://www.beanstalkjourneys.com/Fischesser-History-of-Ropes-Course.pdf)

One day, we were introduced to a new challenge. There were ropes stretched from tree to tree, and we had to cross from tree to tree via those ropes.

The first was the most difficult, as far as I was concerned. It was the Double Rope Bridge.

Two ropes were tied one below the other to the anchors on the side of each tree. The distance between the ropes was about 3 feet. You walked on the lower rope and held onto the rope on the top while walking sideways. 

Here is a photo of the Double Rope Bridge.

Stream Crossing – JAWAHAR INSTITUTE OF MOUNTAINEERING ..

You stood 10 feet above the ground.

“Who wants to go first?” asked our instructor.

Up went Max’s hand, as expected. “Silly fella,” I thought to myself.

He got up the ladder to the first tree, stepped onto the lower rope, held onto the upper rope, and walked sideways. One step, two steps, three…No, he couldn’t get his foot to take the third step!

“Don’t stop!” yelled the instructor.

Max couldn’t help himself. He tried. He really tried! No way. His foot wouldn’t move!

“Well, come back!” barked the instructor.

Max couldn’t come back either. Both feet were on the lower rope, but his left foot was shaking and shaking and shaking!

“Stop shaking!”

“I can’t get it to stop shaking,” Max moaned. Max stayed there, unable to move forward or back.

The instructor told him to jump down but he couldn’t, as his hands, holding onto the upper rope, refused to let go of their grip.

Eventually, with three guys up there, one pulling, one dragging, and the instructor screaming his head off, Max let go and fell hard onto the ground. He wsn’t hurt at all, strangely but his pride was badly bruised.

Now do you understand why I never volunteer?

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*MY FIRST DAY AT OUTWARD BOUND SCHOOL, SINGAPORE

I arrived just before lunch by ferry with all the other trainees. I was sponsored by the University of Singapore (SU). There were several others from SU. One was so skinny that he had to get a letter from the university doctor that he was healthy enough to attend OBS! (In fact, he thrived throughout the course!)

Almost all the others were sponsored by Singapore Airlines (SIA). They were applicants for jobs with SIA. I gad two tent-mates, and both were 17 and had just finished their Ordinary Levels. If they passed OBS, SIA would employ them. Compared to them, I was old, 23.

The first day was TERRIBLE!

Lunch was wonderful because we were starving and the chicken curry was delicious. We ate and ate! There was enough for repeats. Throughout OBS, food would always be more than sufficient. Lunch finished.

After lunch, we unpacked. There were ten of us in my watch, the smallest. We stayed in the same room, a small dormitory.

At 3.30pm, we were assembled at the field, and then we went through a gruelling Physical Training session that lasted till almost 5.30pm! We were pushed and pushed: Faster! Faster! Faster!

On and on and on it went….

I regretted the three bowls of rice and chicken curry and potatoes. I even vomited some of it out! The session never seemed to end.

Finally, it did.

Straight to the beach we went, for a quick dip, fully clothed.

Suddenly, someone noticed a trainee lying face-down in the sea. He was taken away, and nothing else was seen or heard. Some time later, a boat came from the mainland and took him away. He was carried away on a stretcher.

We thought no more of it till two days later, when a fellow-trainee reported that he had spoken to his parents on the phone. It seemed that the trainee who had been taken away was dead, drowned! I was not able to confirm if it was true. I still don’t know the truth.

*Lesson 1
The lesson I learnt that day was to always hold something in reserve, to never give everything in one go. More would be demanded, so I had to have something in reserve.

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OUTWARD BOUND SINGAPORE

It says: This is to certify that THONG WEE HING has successfully completed Outward Bound Course No PU 59 at Pulau Ubin from 11 June to 2 July 1973.

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I went to the Outward Bound School, Singapore, from 11 June to 2 July. This was in 1973.

A memorable occasion is posted below.

2 MY PULAU UBIN EXPERIENCE AT OUTWARD BOUND SCHOOL, SINGAPORE, 1973.

My watch was on a 2-day, 1-night kayak trip. For the night, we were camping just inside a rubber estate. The instructor, after warning us not to wander around, and in particular, not to go down the little track leading deeper in the estate, left us to return to Outward Bound School HQ.

A watch member explained that the track led to a Muslim burial ground. That was what our instructor had said.

After dinner and cleaning up, we sat around a campfire, exchanging stories and telling jokes. Bed time came quickly for we were all tired out from paddling kayaks all day.

I slept in a 3-man tent. I was 23, and the other two were young boys, 17, so I got the place beside the tent flap that kept out mosquitoes. It was my duty to keep the mosquito coil burning.

At about 6am, or maybe just before, I was woken up by the buzzing of mosquitoes on the outside of the tent flap. That meant that our coil was finished. I lit another, and was about to go back to sleep when I noticed someone standing on the other side of the clearing, maybe 15 feet away.

I put on my glasses, looked, and wondered what he was doing there so early in the morning.

“Encik!” I said, “Cari siapa? Mahu apa?”

No reply. Just a slight stirring of his long, white gown in the gentle breeze. No word.

Ever so slightly, he turned away, moving, moving, floating…..and he floated away down the path that led deeper into the estate.

Okay, he’s gone, so it’s time to sleep.

Suddenly, several things occurred to me.

He did not walk but floated. Huh? All the stories I had heard before about ghosts floating, feet not touching the ground, shot through my mind. My veins turned cold with ice!

He had a LONG, WHITE SHEET, the kind Muslim men were buried in! And he floated off deeper down the track to where there was a burial ground for Muslims. Sheesh!

He had no face! HE HAD NO NO NO NO NO FACE!!!!!!!

IT’S TRUE, ghosts float, their feet not on the ground. AT LEAST IT’S TRUE OF THAT ONE I SAW.

WAS HE UGLY? HOW WOULD I KNOW? HE HAD NO FACE.

This was posted in Ghosts

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The Core Values of Outward Bound

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HISTORY

Values

We teach to and work by these values:

Compassion
—Demonstrating concern and acting with a spirit of respect and generosity in service to others.

Integrity
—Acting with honesty, being accountable for your decisions and actions.

Excellence
—Being your best self, pursuing craftsmanship in your actions, and living a healthy and balanced life.

Inclusion and Diversity
—Valuing and working to create communities representative of our society that support and respect differences.

http://www.outwardbound.org/

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