Saikung 07 - chapter 2

As I mentioned last week in my blog about my boat trip to Saikung w/ my lab group that I was going to be going again in a week.  this time it was a quasi-birthday party for myself and j.to (or at least that was the excuse we used to motivate people to come).   

I was worried when the weather turned to crap this last week.  Every day since tuesday had been rain and thunder storms (in addition to the normal super high humidity).  But luckily there were some patches of sun in between.  Saturday turned out to be relatively good.  It was sunny in the morning and it didn't really start raining til we were well out in the water. 

We had a 25 person boat.  Not quite as big as last week's,  but good enough for the job.  we did super-no frills.  no fishing, no cooking no speed boat or wakeboarding.  just cruising and swimming.

I was worried that we weren't going to have a good turn out,  not just because of the weather, but because almost everyone except me was coming from HK island, and Saikung is pretty far away ( g00gle map).

But amazingly almost everyone made it in time.  One guy was late, so he was going to catch up with us later by boat. We set sail on time.

The overcast skies kept away the fear of sunburn... and made the mountainous scenery look a bit cooler.

Mabel and Stephen

cruising on the top of the boat. we sailed out towards a nice beach on an island out in Saikung bay.

Some wakeboarders zoomed by

one place we cruised by was this creepy island (tai tau chau) covered w/ a graveyard ( g00gle satellite map)... good setting for a movie maybe. :-P

Here was our destination.  A nice sandy beach in a place called 'Rocky Bay' ( google map)  Most of the guys swam into shore,  some got a ride from an old lady w/ a boat... (who made a LOT of money that afternoon)

Telephoto of the guys on the beach...

About an hour late, T showed up:

He had to hire a boat to bring him out,  but he made it before the weather broke...

ack - torrential downpours!

Bob and Eva were the only ones who were willing to brave the rain and swim all the way back:

According to his T-shirt, Bob is a life saving flotation device.

Once everyone was back on board, we just cruised around and ate and drank:

Boon!

Burton and Marbel (and Andrew...)

On our way back in we started passing dragon boats.  Next week is the big dragon boat festival in HK...  (unfortunately i'll miss it cause i'll be in japan that week).  Btw, our boat we were riding on was identical in design to this one on the left, except ours didn't have the nice stained wood finish. :-P

As we got off the pier a bunch of the dragon boat guys were unloading.

It was a fun day,  I'm glad everyone was able to make it all the way to Saikung despite the rain.   Everyone wants to do it again next month.  Hopefully I can plan one for the end of July...