Puma rocks my boat.

Thanks to Jayden and Josiah, the kind peeps at Puma invited me and a friend (I brought Claudia! who took the most beautiful pictures, koped some from her blog) to experience a ride on the Puma VO70.

Do you guys know that you can actually head down to the Race Village (located at Sentosa Cove) to take a look and take pictures? There are loads of activities there, if I’m correct, there is a free shuttle from Vivocity. (Can anyone confirm this?) Do take a look at the place during this weekend! Did you know that the Volvo Ocean Race is deemed as the F1 race of the sea?

We were the only two bloggers invited to experience the 3 hour ride with the very good looking crew. *cough*

Before our ride, I took some seasick pills which was a bad idea. The pills made me kinda woozy and drowsy. 🙁

Anyway, I was all ready to go. Cap checked, sunscreen checked, sunnies checked!

All ready to go!

The first thing I noticed about the boat was how eye catching it was.

The bright red sails made the boat stand out from the rest of the boats. The designer who did the design for the boat ought to get a good fat bonus for his/her awesome design!

If you were thinking that I’ll be sipping champagne while sunbathing in a bikini while being fed strawberries by the extremely yummilicious crew, you are so wrong! (I wouldn’t mind that actually. *cough*)

We all had a chance to get a hands on experience to grind (this grinding does not mean dancing intimately in clubs, mind you.) and steer.

It was hard work.

My arms were aching like mad and I couldn’t keep up! It was hard grinding and trying to keep a balance especially at times where the boat was tilted to like a 45 degrees angle!

What is grinding? Claudia explains it in her blog and I conveniently koped the explanation. 😛

Six men will be needed at the ‘grinder’ (as shown above), a winch on board a sailboat and is used for hauling in and tensioning a variety of sail handling and control lines. All of us had a go at grinding. It needs lots of upper body strength and a very good balancing skill!

I went sailing in Sydney during my Unexpected Australia trip but that was nothing compared to this! This experience was really amazing. We were given a tour around the boat to take a look at their living conditions and all and I really admire them for their strength and strong will.

This is what they take for energy. Doesn’t taste really nice to me. :/

It was amazing watching them work, they were changing the sails, grinding, adjusting this and that at a extremely and efficient speed. Great teamwork!

It seems like while I was busy grinding away, Claudia was snapping pics of the crew. Here are some pics of the hotties. Drool away!

Extremely yummilicious aren’t they?

I was pretty sad when the 3 hour ride came to an end. It was really great fun and I really enjoyed the experience.

Cheers to the Captain who was really friendly and told us little nuggets of information about sailing.

And to Gabriel, the very friendly Marketing Manager of Puma who showered us with very warm hospitality.

If you’re feeling all hyped up after reading this entry, (well, you should be!) here’s how you can participate. You can do one of the following (or even all of them!)

• Wave goodbye to the boats on Sunday before they head over to their next leg which would be Qing Dao. From what I’ve heard, Qing Dao would be the toughest and most dangerous leg. We were told that the boats would be passing by East Coast’s shore around noon after 10.30am blessing of the fleet which will be located at Sentosa Cove.
• Check out the race village at Sentosa Cove. There is also a Volvo Grinding Challenge. Take part and experience what we ourselves have experienced! There is also a stimulator and other interesting activities.
• Do check out the lovely Volvo Ocean Race merchandise!
• Follow the race at http://www.volvooceanrace.org.

Here’s wishing the Puma team best of luck and to a successful, smooth-sailing *cough pun intended cough* trip!