Some lucky people will surf their whole lives without ever sustaining an injury. Most of us, however, will at some point be on the receiving end of a bit of bodily punishment. It can be down to bad luck, bad judgement or in the worst case some irresponsible fool nailing you good and proper.
Here’s some first hand accounts of real life gore and next post will be a load of cool, instructional shit you really should learn….
When we surf we do so on a sharply pointed projectile, a weapon armed with three sharp fins that travels at high velocity. So it’s not a major surprise that in the battle between the board and your soft human body, the board generally wins.
The waves and the sea bottom can also stitch you up nicely. Water pressure can blow your eardrums, twang muscles and drown you…The sea floor is an accident waiting to happen; reefs can break your bones and put big holes in you, especially coral reefs, they are legally obliged to give you those funky looking scars for life. Sand bottom waves are not to be dismissed; they will merely concuss you and are equally happy snapping vertebrae…
Of course the main danger is something you bring with you- fins: They are the main source of pain, with the nose of the board bringing up the rear, or in Tom Carroll’s famous case going up his rear… Spearing yourself in the ring-piece has got to be one of the worst things you can possibly suffer whilst surfing. Whilst injuries from the nose do happen, these can generally be prevented, by using a nose-guard or similar protective tip. Fins are the main enemy. We’ve all suffered nicks and cuts from wiping out and catching a fin, but other surfer’s fins pose the biggest danger.
True story anecdotal bit part-1
Ten years ago I was out surfing Bournemouth Pier, the waves were three-feet, clean and a small crowd was enjoying the autumnal surf. Some longboarders were out hogging the sets and it was pretty obvious that a few of them could not control the direction of their boards whilst surfing or had much of a clue about how to paddle out. I gave them a wide berth but it wasn’t long before something happened. One guy (we’ll call Trev) took a wave and started careering down the line directly towards another that was paddling out (known here as Bob). Trev made no effort to change his line or pull off, Bob didn’t paddle out of his way towards the whitewater, like he should of, and when impact was near attempted the lamest duckdive I have ever witnessed, submerging a whole inch below the waters surface. It was like watching a slow-motion train wreck. Trev surfed straight over the barely submerged speedbump that was Bob. I surfaced from my duckdive to see Trev long gone and Bob bobbing around having lost his log. He looked peeved and a tad confused.
“He hit me!” he said,
“I know,” I said.
“Can you take a look?” he said.
“Sure,” I said.
I paddled the few metres to him and it was at that point that the six-inch long slit running from just behind his temple, over the top of his ear to the back of his head yawned open and a crimson waterfall started.
“How does it look?” he said, sounding a bit nervous.
“Not too bad,” I said, reassuringly.
He then noticed the rapidly expanding slick of blood in the water, figured out it was his and promptly passed out. Trev, the hit & run merchant, was nowhere to be seen; he’d caught the wave in and naffed off. After slicing Bob’s melon open with his fin you’d think he would of at least made sure the guy was alive. Surfers are supposed to look out for each other, or so I thought.
Thankfully, a more competent longboarder helped me get the leaking, prostrate Bob to the beach using his plank as a waterborne stretcher. Bizarrely, a psychic ambulance crew were already there, waiting to take him to hospital… He was very lucky in that respect, but not in any other.
True story anecdotal bit-2
The North Shore of Hawaii several years later, Pipe is firing on all cylinders; one of the hundred people swarming the peak takes off on a triple overhead bomb. Dropping down the face he makes no effort to make subtle adjustments to his line to avoid a pack of duck-diving surfers. He passes straight through them, his fins slicing through the water at 30mph, inches from soft human flesh. He reaches the bottom of the wave, fails entirely to make his bottom turn, catches a rail, and cartwheels amusingly to his doom as the lip thunders over his head. Out the back, one of those surfers he ploughed through has something else on his mind apart from the set darkening the horizon. His calf has been dissected, opened up like a ripe fruit; the Brazilian madman’s fin has sliced his meat to the bone. Only the keen eyes of someone on the beach alerts the lifeguards to his plight, other surfers help him to the beach, he’s totally in shock, barely conscious and going a deathly grey colour. As they bring him up the beach to the Ehukai beach park I realise he’s one of my Hawaiian mates. We lie him on a picnic table to keep his leg elevated and wait for the paramedics, he’s trying to stay awake, he doesn’t recognise me, or his best friend as we try to reassure him. There’s hardly any blood, it seems he doesn’t have much left. It’s hard to look at the carnage at the bottom of his leg without losing your lunch. There’s an uncomfortable silence, we are all thinking ‘how much blood do you need to lose before… well, before it gets terminal?’ We are helplessly watching our friend fade away. The paramedics arrive, giving us some much needed hope, but before they do anything the gulf between the European and the U.S health system becomes obvious.
“Where’s his insurance?” says the chief medic.
“??????” responds the small crowd of friends and lifeguards.
“Need his insurance before we do anything,” he says in a jobsworth fashion.
A credit card sails through the air and strikes the medic squarely on the forehead; the victims best mate being the guy with the good aim.
“Just save him,” he says quietly, although his eyes betray anger he has no outlet for.
The next day we hear that our mate has stabilised and will be fine once he beats the anaemia. The cleft in his calf took one hundred and eighty internal stitches to put the muscle back together and one hundred and thirty external to zip him back up. Kid’s now got one helluva fancy scar to impress the ladies with…
In both of these cases medical help was on hand, very quickly. If the same thing had happened on a surf trip out in the middle of nowhere the outcome would not have been so happy.
For the benefit of your friends, yourself and the mysterious stranger whose life you could save take a good read of the advice in the next post and do everyone a favour and go on a recognised first aid/CPR course…
