Almost lost an eye from a board legrope spring back after a wipe out at a place called Corsair which is a twenty minute boat ride away from the nearest allowable parking. It was a long, anxious hour till I eventually got to the hospital and learnt that despite my eye being the blind, bloody mess that my was, I was not going to lose it. Then had to get my eyelid stitched back together without anaesthetic as the eyelid is too thin to get a needle in to. Ouch!
My scariest moment in the ocean wasn’t surfing, as I was only 3. My mom was holding my hand in medium-sized waves on the beach in Margate, and she let go (she assured me later that it was an accident 
I don’t know how close I actually came to drowning, but to be spun in the washing machine at that age is pretty traumatic, and I remember it clearly 54 years later…
Second scariest moment in the water was paddling out on Park Pl., OC, on this super lightweight (5 lbs.) 6’4" single I had made on a huge NE swell storm surf day that was breaking God only knows how many bars out from the beach. There was white water nearly to the horizon. I won’t try to make the wave strength out to be comparable to what the Cali & Island guys cope with - it clearly isn’t even close. OTOH, don’t forget that on our beach breaks, there is no such thing as a channel, and in storm surf the concept of sets that can be timed is frequently down the hopper. Anyway, after maybe 20 minutes I’m 3/4 of the way out (maybe a bit more), and an even bigger wave just comes roaring through. This is maybe 1970, and I have never even heard of duck diving, so I turn turtle. Wonderful strategy; I catch the wave on my back. While wrapped around my board, the wave tosses me like a cork all the way back in to about 10 yards off the beach (possibly 3 minutes all told) with only occasional opportunities to poke my head out of the soup and get a quick breath.
Now, please remember that it wasn’t me who started the dead body accounts. When I was with the Cape May Count Rescue Squad in 1968, we got a report of a “floater” off 15th St. beach. This was summer with high water temps, and deterioration is rapid. This one looked to have been in for a couple of weeks or more - had been nibbled on pretty good. So we pull the body out, and put it on a gurney with a blanket over it (this is before the days when body bags were used routinely) There was a steep set of stairs from beach to boardwalk, which was elevated about 8’. Now, we were trained to adjust arm position when negotiating stairs with a patient on a stretcher so that the patient remains as level as possible. But this “patient” was already dead, and his comfort wasn’t of great concern, so the guy at the bottom got lazy and didn’t raise his arms (I, fortunately, was an observer only on this run) About halfway up the stairs, the abdominal wall ruptured, and the guts and organs broke sufficiently loose to start smacking the guy at the bottom in the face. This became squad legend, along with this one: A call comes in reporting that a resident who is known to have serious cardiac problems and who has been rushed to hospital on several previous occasions has been in his bathroom, silent, for an hour. A team drives over, and brings the oxygen apparatus into the house with them. The squad Captain, O2 bottle under arm and mask in hand, all juiced up to slap the mask on the victim’s face, throws open the bathroom door and rushes in, only to find that the victim had died wiping himself, turned 180 deg. towards the bowl…
-Samiam
pau…aloha and mahalo!
getting pounded in DOH pascuales. dropped in took the lip to the head, then i was dragged along the bottom for a while.
‘Touch wood’ i havent had too many scary moments so far!
Scariest i can remember was when i was travelling in NZ. Got to Ruapuke about an hour before sunset and it looked pretty good, about shoulder to head on a sandbar a little way offshore. There was one guy out so i suited up and paddled out. The surroundings are pretty impressive, 8+km black sand beack with a mountain to one side, absolute middle of nowhere, nice sunset and dark green, cold, crystal clear water. Had about half an hour surfing with this guy before he decided he was heading in so i thought id stay for a while and catch a few more waves. As soon as the sun dropped below the horizon it quickly got cold and the water turned pretty much black. At this point i start thinking whether this is a wise idea but i carry on surfing anyway. Then about 5m to my side i see a black fin pop up and disappear before i get a proper look at it! Im now a good 5 minute paddle away from shore, at dusk, in the middle of nowhere, and alone! I started paddling in slowly trying not to splash too much and look like a seal (black wetsuit and all!). Nothing happened but it definately freaked me out for a while!
I’ve hit the bottom a few times on reefs and had some pretty sketchy saves, especially 2OH Gnaraloo and losing the board, but its never scared me as much as that day in NZ.
James
There’s a place here in NJ where there’s an inlet that’s used by fishing boats. It’s a long hike to the spot, and a long, long paddle out to the shifting sandbars that fire on a good South swell. I was out with 2 friends on a hot summer evening many years ago, when my board hit me in the face and my nose started gushing blood. Just GUSHING. Well… it was starting to get dark, and in come the fishing boats, cleaning their catch as they pull into the inlet. Sharks always follow these boats to pick up the scraps. Mostly makos.
Sudenly a fin pops up about four feet from me and starts circling. Not a big fish, but big enough to take a hand off as I paddled like hell back to shore, my own blood flowing into a trail behind me, and that damn shark following closely, just checking me out, deciding whether to make a part of me his dinner.
a few come to mind…
i was surfing dogpatch at sano by myself one morning, and all of a sudden i heard something blow water out of its nose behind me. damn seal. he was less than 3 feet away from me, perfectly behind my board. as if he purposely snuck up behind and blew water just to scare me. he sat there with his head out of the water for a few seconds, then finally swam away.
then there was the time i ended up in the rocks at the sealbbeach jetty a few days before the pier was knocked down back in the mid 80s. i had cuts and bruises all over my back, and i had to hide em from my mother for a few week so she wouldnt freak out. i was 15 years old at the time.
in that same jetty, a buddy and i were the first to paddle out at sunrise once. we got out to the furthest break, and with in the first 5 minutes a small shark fin swam in between us. we freaked out and caught the next wave and rode it all the way in. we sat on the beach for awhile, telling other people what we encountered, but i think alot of guys thought we were bullshitting as they just paddled out. after an hour or so, we paddled out again.
i think the most scariest moment was when i was surfing HB cliffs about 15 years ago by myself. it was in between sets, and all of a sudden i heard something behind me, in between the shore and me. it was a very large humpback whale, covered with barnicles. he moved slowly past me, and we actually made eye to eye contact. he was less than 12 feet away from me. i think he was checking me out. the funny thing is that when i first noticed him, i got so scared i blurted out “mamma!”. howz that for getting scared all the way back to your child-self?
Chip: Story two is very scary. Something like that happened to me too. Is that why you don’t have a girlfriend?
D
The worst I’ve had so far touch wood, is my gun embedded in my lower gum through my cheek, which needed abunch of stitches and duck tape to keep me surfing after a barrel in france and having most of my ear cut off in costa rica by my fin. I’m only now getting the scary wipeout as I’ve just started to wear contacts in the water, before that it was all a blur of coloured shapes, I use to work on the idea that the blacker the wave the steeper it was (brown was ready for take off).
cheers Joe
Hi,
Well, nothing scaries me up as fast coldfront arrivals, when those darkgrey clouds come over you bringing with them a huge shower and a storm of lightingbolts flashing in the sky like an umbrela or a giant circus tent. I knew a guy who was bbqed by one of these flashes…
Joe, you wear contacts in the water? I just got contacts and was thinking of doing the same but figured they would just wash right out. Since they are disposable it wouldn’t be too much of a problem. How are they working for you? Staying in?
Quote:
getting pounded in DOH pascuales. dropped in took the lip to the head, then i was dragged along the bottom for a while.
I’ll second that on Pascuales. Heavy. Just heavy.
Poorly timed paddle-out, caught the lip right on my head, broken leash. Found myself treading water in the work zone as a solid 1.5-2xOH set came rolling in on me. Had to make the sickening decision to swim out to get past the set rather than in. That sucked. Still managed to catch the 2-ft thick lip of the biggest wave of the set directly on my head. That’s one image I will never forget as long as I live, that last look up at the thickest lip I’ve ever seen right before filling my lungs with air and diving as deep as I could. I still got worked. Ragdolled, hard and long. Popped up just long enough for another quick breath before the next one clamped down on me. The second one held me down for what seemed like twice as long, either because the churning foam gave less flotation or just because the lack of oxygen made everything seem that much more critical.
Ordinarily, I’m not a fan of getting bounced off the bottom, even when it is as yeilding as a sandbar. In this case however, I was overjoyed to feel the sand between my shoulders. It gave me a reference for the surface, and something to push off from to reach that surface.
At that point I was pushed in far enough to be away from the worst of it, still getting well-churned for a few more waves, but not nearly as violently. But I was tired from the first two, and at this point I was scared.
I’ve been thrilled many times surfing, and I’ve been exhilarated, and I’ve even been frightened a time or two. But that is the only time that I’ve been truly scared, that I even considered the possiblity that I had put myself in a situation from which I might not escape. Of course, anytime you paddle out there is the chance that something could happen, but I prefer not to be faced with it quite that directly.
Much respect for the guys who charge pascuales.
Scariest would have to be my favorite shark story. Surfing point dume on a not-so-big day maybe head high. And all of a sudden a seal pops up not 50 yards away. This is in a lull so i just check out the seal. Watch him for a few minute or two, then see a large black fin surface about 100 yards away from the seal and disappear, turn back to the shore, and hear this dull “thud” and splashing, i look at where the seal was and theres nothing but a tail fin and a real big pool of blood. Never got out of the water that fast in my life.
Worst wipeout was this past summer on a solid head high day. I was tired from surfing dawn till dusk the day before. Its a beautiful day, my friends birthday and the middle of summer. Glassy 6 foot lefts and rights, perfection. I catch my first wave, a good 150 yard ride. I go for my second, get caught in the lip and pitched out. I try to bail and jump backwards into the wave, well I will never do that again as what happened next was not pretty. You can imagine the force a heavily glassed rail of a fish can deliver when properly placed in a solid barrelling wave. It was fate as the bridge of my nose and the rail collided underwater with all the force that wave could muster. I check to see if I am bleeding, and theres red all around. Walk onshore to see all of the faces agape with horror at my crimson face. Some unconsciousness, liquid stitches and a permanent twist later, Its all good as new.
Last time I surfed Big Dume, I shared a wave with three dolphins. That place is magic.