canoeing - yesterday & today

the canoeing scene has changed somewhat over the years. when we first started in the 60s, there were not many fibreglass canoes, so some of us had to make do with wooden sampans. they were heavier, not so sleek and so needed more strength and effort to manoeuvre.

today, they have both kayaks and canoes, all made of light-weight material. they also have different classes of kayaks, from k1 to k4. those early days, we had only c1 and c2 categories for canoes. nowadays, they even have the canadian kayaks.

those days, all canoes belonged to schools or organisations. these days, some students have their personal canoes or kayaks. a k1 imported kayak costs around $4320 and a k4 cost about $12k.

not many schools and colleges were into canoeing in the past because not many teachers were trained in this water sports. more schools are involved these days and the teachers in charge need not have any knowledge of the sports, there are local as well as imported coaches, mainly from china, to take care of the training.

in the past, we used to carry out our training sessions in the sea off changi. presently, there are two main training areas for students, one at macritchie reservoir and the other at bedok reservoir. in the sea, there is scope for varying our training grounds whereas in the reservoirs, every canoeist is expected to stay within a designated area.

i was trying to point out to my friend, who is still involved in coaching, that nowadays the students do not enjoy the variety of activities that we had. instead of training all the time, we organised overnight canoeing expeditions to pulau ubin. seems like now, it is the only island available for such an activity; the other islands like seletar, tekong and coney are out-of-bounds to the public.