A Peaceful Near-Death Experience
So… I had a totally new experience recently.. It wasn’t pleasant but it also wasn’t quite as awful as it’s going to sound when you read this story about it. This is a tale of my most recent big-wave surfing adventure. There will be blood, vomit, a whole lot of dizziness, and all the finer details of what comes along with getting forced to the bottom of the sea too quickly.
About a month ago I headed out to The Right with my friend that you probably know, Ollie Henry. The swell was giant, literally reading 7 metres on the live buoys, and the wind was an uninviting 10-15kn onshore seabreeze. When I laid my eyes on the lineup my first thoughts were that it looked fairly dangerous and intimidating. Every wave was drawing a heap of water off the reef due to the unusually large swell period, the sets were massive and rolling through consistently and the onshore wind was adding an element of uncertainty for what each wave was going to do when it hit the reef.
“Nerves, doubt, excitement, anticipation, it was a cocktail of different feelings and emotions”
I didn’t want to sit and watch and come up with reasons why I shouldn’t have surfed, so I jumped off the ski and into the water straight away. Nerves, doubt, excitement, anticipation, it was a cocktail of different feelings and emotions. I’ve learned from past experiences that if I sit around on the ski when I’m feeling any kind of doubt towards a big wave session my keenness levels for surfing only seems to dwindle even more. It’s better (for me) to get straight into it. Shoot first, ask questions later.
Straight off the bat Ollie whipped me into a couple of nice slabs and once I’d ridden a couple of waves my confidence grew, my nerves had settled and I was getting into the flow of the session. After my second good pit we swapped positions and I started towing Ollie. I’ve found, throughout the years of surfing The Right, it’s better to swap between driving the ski and riding waves more frequently so that both me and my tow buddy for the day have an equal opportunity of getting good waves, instead of just one of us cleaning up during a potential pulse of action while the other misses out entirely. It didn’t take long after Ollie getting behind the rope that he rode some pretty huge looking sets and within about 45 minutes he told me that he was content to drive again for a second round, so we swapped back again.
On my second rotation of riding waves I felt hungry for a really big one. It not very often that I get the chance to ride the wave of my life and I’d seen some waves already out there this specific afternoon that were up there with the biggest waves I’ve ever seen. My mind was in a good place to chase one of these monsters down and I was hoping that the stars would align and things would work out with how I was hoping and envisioning the afternoon to unfold; me riding out into the channel after trucking through the worlds biggest barrel. Very optimistic. Very far from what happened next.
On my next wave I got towed in really deep on the reef on a wave that looked like it wasn’t going to open up nicely. It wasn’t the biggest wave I’ve ever caught out there but it was draining a lot of water and still felt like there was immense power behind the wave. I rode the swell for a few seconds, trying to position myself as best I could, but the whole wave began to collapse in on itself. Rather than an open barrel it was beginning to resemble something closer to a waterfall.
I had no other option but to try and pull into it anyway. It was either that or bus ride and get exploded into pieces. A word of advice if you’re riding really big slabs; never bus ride. You can’t outrace a 20 foot barrel and It doesn’t ever end well to try and do that.
I (somewhat) hopelessly pulled in, trying to find the best line I could to stay on my board for as long as possible, knowing that I wasn’t going to be riding out of this wave into the channel. The wave clamped down on me instantly and I bailed off my board as soon as I felt the weight of the wave beginning to crush me from above. I thought I was going to get swallowed into the wave and throttled underwater but I found myself flying through air. To try and explain what it felt like, imagine you’re in the attic of a house. Then, all of a sudden, the ceiling beneath you collapses and what once felt like solid ground gives way and you’re falling through space.
“You can’t outrace a 20 foot barrel and it doesn’t ever end well to try and do that”
I broke through the ceiling and was now falling towards the actual ground beneath me, limbs flailing. I’m pretty sure I did a cartwheel before landing back into water and then I instantly got carried upwards and was thrown over again, this time a more familiar feeling of going over the falls with the lip.
I knew I was engulfed by a lot of heavy water, it’s pretty easy to sense how much power a wave has when you’re upside down, getting taken over the falls and about to be buried by it. I wasn’t panicked or scared at all though. Rather, just focussed on the moment, keeping my mind calm and my body positioned as safely as I could so that I could hold my breath long enough to not drown and hopefully keep all 4 of my limbs attached to my body. Once I started getting driven deep into the water the next events unfolded really quickly. No longer than 10-20 seconds did I resurface again, but in this tiny window of time is where the fun stuff really happened.
Firstly, my ears began hurting. A dull and deep throb inside my head transformed into an excruciating and searing, red-hot pain in about 3 seconds. I began reaching to pull my inflation vest because I was sure my ear drums wouldn’t take much more pressure and were about to burst, but on the way to pull my vest something went horribly wrong inside my head. I didn’t feel anything rip or tear, it was more like a surge of dizziness instantly overwhelmed me. It felt like some kind of system inside of my head, keeping me oriented and balanced, turned off and left me and my consciousness flipping and spinning without any sense of direction. I went from getting thrown around underwater to flying uncontrollably through the cosmos, flipping and spinning at speeds I’ve never felt before. My sense of reality fading rapidly.
I was incredibly close to blacking out and I knew it. The walls were closing in, not visually, but I could internally feel myself fading into unconsciousness. Even though I was very far from a sober state in that moment there was still a part of my mind thinking completely logically and I knew on some level that I needed to pull my vest. If I pull my vest I’ll be okay. That’s the final thought process I remember having before I managed to get my hand to my chest and pull the cord.
As soon as I felt the canister of my inflation vest puncture, and the air begin to fill the bladder, I allowed myself to go completely limp. There was no feelings of fear or panic, it was actually an incredibly peaceful experience. Like the feeling of lying down into your bed when you’re extremely tired and finally able to relax and let go of the day. In this moment I totally surrendered, resigned to the fact that I was about to go unconscious. Nothing left for me to do to minimise the danger I’m in. This is where all of my decisions and actions have led me, moments away from drowning at the bottom of the ocean. I really hope someone out here knows CPR, I briefly thought, because I’m not ready to die.
The boys who were watching all of this unfold from the safety of the channel tell me that when I reached the surface I came up feet first and was kicking downwards, in the opposite direction. I had to wear another wave on the head before Ollie was able to get to me on the ski and yank me up onto the back of the sled. As we headed towards the channel on the ski all I was focussed on was holding on to the handles of the sled. I had a death grip on them and kept telling myself ‘don’t let go.’ My ears were killing me and I couldn’t see properly. The brightness of the world had just been cranked up by 500% and it was too bright to keep my eyes open.
We arrived to the safety of the channel but I was far from feeling ‘safe’. You know that feeling when you’ve consumed way too much alcohol, you can’t function so you lie down, and then once you become still the world begins spinning uncontrollably and all that’s left to do is vomit everywhere? If you haven’t, don’t worry. It’s not a good experience anyway. But that’s very similar to how I felt. I was sitting on the back of the ski, bleeding out of my nose and ears. My eyes were closed, and my internal compass was utterly shattered. Even though I knew I was bobbing around on the ski it felt like I was backflipping through outer space, nausea beginning to take hold.
After what felt like an eternity of battling through this experience, but in reality was probably only 15 minutes, I couldn’t stop myself from vomiting. My dizziness conquered my will to keep my breakfast inside my belly and I was forced to succumb to the shameful act of spewing up my delicious fruit and yoghurt meal that now tasted like utter shit. Sour and rancid.
“This is where all of my decisions and actions have led me, moments away from drowning at the bottom of the ocean”
In the blink of an eye I woke up to the sound of jetskis revving their engines. It was morning and people were already heading back out to The Right again after putting their skis in the water at the boat-ramp. After the night’s sleep I actually felt pretty good and I thought that I’d maybe healed miraculously overnight and was in a state to tackle some more XL waves. Then I stood up.
My first step out of the swag ended with me on my back. I was still so dizzy that I literally couldn’t walk. I so badly needed to piss but I was so dizzy that I wasn’t too sure what to do. Piss my pants? Surely not. I tried to rush over to the bushes but I kept tripping over myself and actually fell backwards onto my back whilst trying rush over to the closest bush. It made me chuckle because of how stupid I must have looked from other peoples perspectives, but the level of dizziness I was still experiencing was a bit worrying. I made it to the bushes but as I started to empty my bladder I also began realising that I was very unwell. I was so nauseous, so dizzy and felt fairly detached from reality. This was a totally novel experience for me, to be so disoriented, dizzy and fatigued. I became upset. Upset that I wouldn’t be able to surf the Right again, upset that I was injured in some still unknown way that was certainly going to take some time to recover from, and upset that I was a 5-hour drive away from home and was definitely not in a state to drive. I didn’t cry, but I wanted to. Although the tears didn’t come, the feeling of sadness and fear were very strong inside of me.
I guess before I wrap this story up you probably want to know what the actual injury was that I had sustained. After seeing my doctor back in Perth I was told that I’d sustained an injury known as ‘Ear Barotrauma’, which is a broad term to describe inner ear and sinus damage caused by rapid changes in air or water pressure when the middle ear can’t equalise. There was no specific treatment that I could really undergo to accelerate the healing of my injuries, I just had to rest and let my body heal itself with time, avoiding any flights or diving for at least a month. I kept a pretty close track on my dizziness levels to make sure that my symptoms weren’t getting any worse, but the whole recovery process seemed to be pretty linear and (thankfully) without any hiccups. Lying on my back was when my symptoms felt worst, which was terrible news for trying to sleep every night during the first week. Every time I went to bed I’d start spinning as soon as my head hit the pillow, and the first few nights were long and nauseating, but I could feel that I was slowly improving. Just before the 2 week mark is when I realised that I basically had my feet under me again while doing day-to-day activities. Working, training, handstands and riding my bike all felt normal again between 2-3 weeks and I went for my first surf at 4 weeks with my ears stuffed full of blu-tac. Damn, it was nice to get back in the water!
My biggest worry about this whole ordeal was whether or not I’d feel traumatised once all the dust had settled. Would I still want to chase waves like this anymore or would a near-death experience scare me away in the future? Well, I gave myself a lot of time and space to process my emotions surrounding the experience ,and I’m happy to realise that I actually feel mostly unbothered by the experience. In an ideal world I would love to get back out to The Right today and be towed straight into a bomb so that I can shake this monkey off my back, but with Summer weather patterns taking over it seems like I won’t get another swell for The Right until next Autumn. So i’ll carry this monkey on my back through the Summer, but i’m okay with that.
When I re-live the experience in my mind and go through the events that unfolded I’m still quite surprised that I didn’t feel any fear. I legitimately came really close to falling unconscious and drowning, and rather than it being scary and panic-inducing it instead felt very peaceful. Those few short moments before the lights basically went out, they were not frightening. I was not only okay but I was at peace with what was happening. This is the part of the experience that I’ve had to contemplate the most so that I can try to understand how I feel about it. I still don’t know if that makes drowning seem more scary or less scary. One part of me feels much calmer now, knowing that if I were to drown while surfing these big waves it’s actually not a horrible experience, and in my final moments (If it goes down in a similar fashion to what happened in this story) I’d be engulfed in feelings of calmness and relaxation before fading into oblivion. This realisation also scares me though. I don’t want to drown, and being less scared of drowning is also not a good outcome from this experience. A healthy, realistic level of fear is very important for being calculated and staying safe in these heavy ocean conditions, so I also can’t think to myself, ‘ohh, drowning is totally fine, I nearly did it a while back and it’s not even scary so let’s go tow into some 20 foot close-outs’.
I LOVE life. I love being alive, having friends and family, occupying my body, feeling all the emotions, living through the good, the bad, and everything in-between. I love existing. There’s too much joy I feel from being alive to drown and have it all come to an end, and even though I now know it might not be a painful or scary way for me to go, I still have way too much life ahead of me to live.
So, there we have it. I nearly drowned. I healed, physically and emotionally, and now i’m ready to keep chasing the highs of life again. It was a fucking crazy thing to experience but it’s not going to affect me in the future or stop me from doing the things that I truly love, which for some reason is dangerous activities, like riding the biggest slabs in the world. It’s paradoxical… the closer to death I get, the more alive I feel.
ALL PHOTOS BY ARI WOLFL.
Filmed by Rex Nink-Mowday
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Creating stories like this is something I love to do and hope to continue doing in the future as I live through more wild experiences. To have a finished product that i'm proud of, however, takes resources. Many hours of writing and revising, and sourcing and paying for photos and/or footage to be used make it a challenging hobby to maintain. Any small donation made will be used to fund future stories like this, and who knows what form these stories will take on in the future with a little bit of funding. I'm excited to find out! Thank you for your support!