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It's Time To Share my Story |
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| November 18th, 2009 | ||||||||||||||||||
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For Wai Nui Year End Video Click here! (right click save target as to download file)
To the folks that were there with me, this is my account from what I wrote that night, things may be slightly off and my perceptions may not be what you actually did but it’s how it all went down for me. I mean no offence to anyone, what happened was no one’s fault. I was on an Outrigger Excursion in Greece with 8 other people and was on the tail end of my European Adventure and had been having the summer of lifetime. “First things first, I am OK! No permanent damage, no broken bones, no one is hurt beyond some cuts/bruises and tired bodies. When the other boats still hadn’t come in, Pete and I decided that we had to go look for them and jumped back in an OC2 to go look for the others. It had taken us 2.5 hours to get to this beach so I was a little tired so when we went to go back onto the water, I got tossed by the surf onto my ass and got nailed with the stern of the boat in a very sensitive area. Recovered quickly and we got loaded up and out on the water which was still getting bigger and the shore that we're going by was all shear cliffs so no safe place to go to shore except the ship beach and one other that we passed on the way. We went out a couple km and couldn't see a thing (little did we know that they could see us and were calling and whistling to us). So many possibilities go through our heads but we couldn't see them on shore so we figured they headed back but it didn't make sense as we were all so close when we pulled ahead of the group. So he and I went back to Shipwreck. The others had eaten while we were gone so I scarffed an apple quickly and a bit of a cereal bar. I reset my temp basal for another couple hours as it was about to expire (remember, we were supposed to have a full lunch and chill on the beach for a few hours). Then the 5 of us hit the water to try and find our missing people which included my partner’s best friend and boyfriend, one of the other lady’s son and a good friend of Pete our leader. Not too long on the way back we saw a site-seeing boat coming out from the cliffs (we hadn't seen the boats stop in there on our way to Shipwreck). Then we see our four paddlers on board. We get the story that their amas sunk (they didn't have the wherewithal to flip them and dump them). They were up against the rocks and finally had to say good bye to the boats to keep themselves off the rocks. Apparently they were in the water for over an hour before they managed to flag down the boat by one guy slashing up his hands/feet on coral to get up on a rock. The people on the boat initially thought it was a bird of some kind trying to take off. They told us that the boats were near the rocks. So Pete went in to survey the boats now that we knew the people were safe. He found that every wave taking them in also pushed them back out from the cliff. While he was in searching for what was left of the boats, my partner and I stayed about 100m from the cliffs and waited, while the ladies in the other boat went out further and paddled circles. My partner was freaking out that we were close to the cliffs but I convinced her that we had to be close enough to see Pete to help him if he needed it and that I wouldn’t let anything happen to her so not to worry. Pete managed to salvage one, he flagged me down with his paddle so we went in towards the cliff a little bit and he brought it out to us and I attached it to our boat using a leash and a towel and tried to tow it back away from the cliffs. Pete headed back towards the cliffs to try and get the other boat. The towing didn’t work very well so I had to get back into the water between the two boats (in major waves) to try another method of attaching them. Finally I had to ask my partner to get into the other boat to steer it so that we could get away from the rocks. She was too scared to move even though I was promising her that she’d be ok and that she could do it. So I had to try and swim both boats back through the waves to get us away from the rocks. Finally I convinced her she had to move and she did and we started moving back a little easier. While I was in the water working on the boats, even though my partner was freaking out she managed to flag down a sailboat with 5 German guys on it (apparently they were sailing to one of the other islands and saw a couple girls through their binoculars and came to investigate). By this time Pete had brought back the other boat (but no ama). So we got the no-ama boat up on the sailboat, got my petrified partner who was going into shock, up in the boat and tied off two boats behind the sail boat for them to tow back (picture me in the water trying to hold onto three boats, one with a sunk ama, in major waves while Pete is putting the other up on the sailboat, needless to say I got nailed in the head a good number of times by the hulls). With Julia safe, one boat onboard and two others tied to be towed, Pete and I got in an OC2 to paddle back with the other two ladies in OC2 but we couldn’t see them! Finally we managed to see them between the waves and paddled out towards them, filled them in on what had happened and what the new plan was and we headed back towards the port. As we were paddling, they started heading off to the open sea instead of heading along parallel to the shore. Pete and I were calling to them, blowing our whistles and cursing. Eventually we had to paddle out to catch them and tell them to come in closer and for goodness sake, to stay together! So now it's 2 boats paddling. Still another 17km to go at least. Another site seeing boat came by. We were all tired so when they offered help we took it. I strung the boats up as best I could with the rope the driver game me, got on board and dude driver gunned it! We watched in horror as the back boat (huki) busted in half as it caught a wave and he went too fast. It was the only boat we had that had absolutely nothing wrong with it! Next idea was to just unrig the boat and get him to let us put the boat on board but all his passengers were seasick (found that out after from the two girls that went back with them). So, they wouldn't let us put the hull on board. So pissed and frustrated Pete and I cursed then got in the OC2 to keep paddling. As I was untying the boat, I remember purposefully telling one of our ladies to make sure they send someone back for us. Pete and I went back towards the busted huki and picked up the lifejacket that was attached to it (as we had nothing at all on our boat anymore). We also had to retrieve the seats for our boat (paddling with a strip of Velcro up your ass, not pleasant, even if it’s just for a few minutes). Then we noticed something red in the water near where we left the sailboat. As we approached, first we went by a busted ama then we found the hull. The sail boat it left behind, guess they had the same problem towing. We put the hull in between our ama and our boat. I was in second seat and had my foot in the front footwell to hold on to the hull. Like this we continued paddling home (all on the right side since the boat I was towing was on our left). So all people safe, as many boats salvaged as possible (each worth at least 5k) and the two strongest paddlers with the most experience left on the water. Best outcome of a bad situation right? So we keep plugging away the best we can talking about that if the situation was different we would be having a blast surfing these waves and enjoying the sunshine. After maybe an hour, we come to a beach that we saw on the way to Shipwreck beach and we both agreed it was best to get off the water and rest for a little. So we worked our way into the beach and navigated the shore break so we didn't get caught in it. We tried to get out of the break but we were so exhausted that we ended up letting the waves wash the boats up on the shore. We moved them up a little further out of reach of the wave, took the seats and sat down in the shade. It was a little before 5pm by this time I think (remember, our day on the water started at 9:30am). We started talking about our options (get back out and paddle leaving the second boat on shore or waiting hoping that someone would come looking for us like we told them to come back for us), I had to be straight with him and tell him that I was likely low right then and if I went back on the water I'd be almost guaranteed to go into a diabetic coma. If I stayed on the beach and didn't move much I told him that I may be able to recover naturally (liver dumping glycogen into my blood but secretly I was also worried that now that the adrenaline of the situation was wearing off, I may go even lower). So that changed our options. We talked about him taking the OC2 and paddling back the about 15km and I stay on the beach (by the way, beach is surrounded by cliffs, no way to get up or down or to the beach except by water) so I felt safe there but was worried about him tired and alone on the water with nowhere to pull over if needed so I eventually convinced him that that wasn't such a good option. Plus if something happened to him out there, people would expect me to be with him and assume I was lost at sea when really I was on the beach. We talked about both of us going and me not working hard but this is me we’re talking about, I don’t know how to be on the water and NOT paddle. So again ... I could go in to diabetic coma on him. Finally we decided that the safest option for both of us was just to stay put and wait. I remember Pete moving the boats up further on the rocks since the tide was coming in and faced them out to the water hoping that the bright red and orange against the white rocks would stand out. We sat and waited. Chatted a little when I could and agreed that we both did the best we could in the situation we just came out of. And I convinced him that there was really nothing he could do for my diabetic situation, I had disconnected my pump to ensure I wasn't getting any insulin but knew I still had some in my system from earlier and that the adrenaline had worn off which may have raised my sugars enough to deal with the situation at hand while we were in the water. Pete even went through the garbage can that was on shore to see if there were any possibilities for some kind of carbohydrate (at this point, anything was better than diabetic coma). No luck. Thank goodness my body wasn't quite ready to give up on me and pulled me through the hallucinations, tunnel vision, shakes and fatigue and back to the world when sometime 6pm, a boat came around the corner. They said they saw the boats we set up right away. It was a boat our friends had sent back for us and one was on it. We had to swim out through the break and waves to it but we didn't care. It was a tough swim but adrenaline is a hell of a drug (surprised that I still had some left in my body). I got pulled into the boat followed by Pete and we got the heck out of there in a hurry. The boat was about to turn around if they didn’t see us on that beach as it was so rough that no boats were supposed to be out on the water because it was so dangerous. As we headed back to port Pete and I just looked at each other and hugged, knowing that finally, we were going to be ok. As we were pulling into the port, we could see the rest of our group on shore watching intently as the boat pulled in. I slowly made my way up off the floor and Pete emerged from behind Niko our driver and we waved. The group saw us and waved back then started hugging eachother, they now knew we were safe too. They helped me off the boat. I was still shakey and very fatigued, my body didn’t really want to do what I was telling it to so I just sat on the bench in a daze for a bit. Finally it dawned on me that the bags beside me were our bags, the bags that we had attached to the boat at the beginning of the day more than 9 hours earlier. Amazingly, the drybag with my glucose was saved and was sitting there. One of the German sailors had jumped in the water to get it when the ama and red hull separated. I ripped into the bag, first coming across my Oakleys (damn, so much for justifying getting new ones), then found my glucose. Tore it open and chugged it down. It soon put me more at ease and the others (they all knew I was diabetic and that paddling makes me go low and that it'd also been about 7 hours since that apple).
So yeah, that’s my story. The next day we drove out to Shipwreck Beach to view it from the top and it was dead calm. What a totally different view. What a totally different day it would have been without those waves. There were so many “What Ifs” from that day. What if the wind hadn’t come up? What if the boats had been built properly and didn’t develop a hole in the back attachment of the ama? What if Pete’s boat didn’t have a faulty seam in the ama? What if there weren’t jellyfish surrounding Pete’s boat when he went to dump it just a km or so from Shipwreck? What if the people on the OC2s knew how to empty their own amas? What if Pete and I had seen them when we went out looking for them? What if we had tied the boats in another manner? What if the driver hadn’t gunned the engine and busted our Huki? What if I hadn’t been there to help Pete? What if I didn’t have Diabetes? I cut my trip in Greece short by a couple days and paid extra $$ to fly back to Toronto to spend time with my parents. I just needed to be with my family before coming back out west. It’s now over two months since this incident. I’ve talked about it with a lot of people now and believe that I’m still here for a reason. There’s more left for me to do. What that is, I have no idea but that’s half the fun isn’t it? Not knowing what the future brings. What I have learned from this situation besides to always have glucose ON ME is that at any time, in any place, anything can happen. Why not do what you love? Why not make YOU happy? It all comes down to, Why Not?
As was written by Kevlon on OCpaddler.com: |
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Last update on: November 18th, 2009 |
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Copyright 2009 Leanne Stanley. All rights reserved. |
