Crazy story out of Indonesia. A South African Surfer Brett Archibald endured a nightmarish 27 hours after falling off the charter boat he was on at night. He stated at one point he had given up hope tried to end it. I mean the guy didn’t have a life jacket or any floating device and had to tread water for that long.
If happened in the Mentawai Strait off Indonesia, Archibald, 50, was traveling aboard the Naga Laut from Padang to the Mentawai Islands which houses a popular surf spot. Apparently Archibald was dealing with sea sickness when he went to the rail to vomit when he became light headed and fell overboard.
Archibald later quoted “…he’d been extremely seasick and may have passed out on the deck of the Naga Laut while being seasick overboard when he woke up already in the sea behind the boat, which continued away from him,”. He also stated he had no memory of falling overboard and thought boat members were splashing him in the face with water when he realized it was the wake from the boat. Nobody on board knew he fell over because it was dark and everyone was sleeping.
Brett said during his 27 hour ordeal he was close to drowning at least 8 times. He had been stung multiple times by jelly fish, fish were picking at his legs and body, and seagulls tried plucking out his eyes. At one point Archibald said he thought he would never be found and decided to end it. He went under water and tried to swallow but his mouth was so dry he couldn’t.
Brett later stated “So then I pulled myself together, said, ‘OK, we need to keep going here,’ and kept swimming and treading water.”
He then attempted to swim to some nearby islands but his efforts were for null with a heavy current.
According to facebook Archibald was last seen around 4:30 a.m. and nobody realized he was missing until around 8 the next morning. At which point the boat immediately turned around to retrace it’s steps and then called the Indonesian Federal Search and Rescue.
It wasn’t until Thursday just before noon that The Barrenjoey with Captain Doris found Archibald 12 miles off the coast of Sipora which was about 10 miles from where he went overboard.
He was later reunited with his group on the Naga Laut and was ready to finish the 8 days left on his trip.
That is a strong 50 year old man.
Overboard Surfer Lost at Sea Survives 27 Hours Treading Water
No comments:
Post a Comment