Asu is a tiny island not far from Nias. But that is the only place nearby. And Nias isn’t exactly a metropolis, sitting off Sumatra, practically in the middle of tropical nowhere. Our ship lay anchored in the lee of the island, a quick paddle away from the reef that has made this speck in the Indian Ocean famous in surfing circles.
We had been enjoying a mellow session there one morning and we were just relaxing and recuperating from a pretty rough crossing on our way back from some of the wilder islands further north. Gavin, who was skippering our yacht, was taking strain. He was worried about the seaworthiness of the ship and our water supply. Slowly, but surely he was becoming unhinged in the tropical heat.
Throughout the day the swell had increased in size and the head high waves we surfed in the morning had doubled in size by lunch time. I was tired and still wary of this wave after a humbling experience here on our previous visit, so after a day of good waves I was happy to watch the surf from the ship with a Bintang in my hand. Gavin had spent most of the day in the engine room again and he emerged from below deck in a foul mood. He was in the wrong frame of mind when he jumped overboard with his surfboard and stroked out towards the surf.
Gavin later told me that he really wanted to smash the waves to get rid of his frustration. He didn’t care that the swell had increased even more since the early afternoon; he was a big guy. He was angry and Asu was going to feel it.
But you don’t mess with the sea. It took only one wave to set things straight between Gavin and Mother Ocean.
“I was still paddling for that wave when the whole thing just jacked up and threw me down,” Gavin told me a few days later. “I went down so quickly, I didn’t even know I was under water. Then it whacked my head into my board so hard I nearly passed out, but I knew I had to stay conscious, otherwise I’d drown. I couldn’t do anything, the wave was too powerful, and so I just concentrated on holding my breath.”
He paused to breathe deeply and then he carried on talking.
“That wave just wouldn’t let up and I was out of air, plus the knock on the noggin had really concussed me. I kept expecting that I would faint and drown any second.
“You know, Doc, I don’t believe in an afterlife. When you die, you cease to exist, like a light switch has been flipped off. So while I could still feel the wave suffocating me, I knew that I was alive. That was kinda good, if you know what I mean. It actually surprised me that I still cared about being alive. I always thought that death would be a relief, but down there in the darkness I realised that I still wanted to live. So I started to swim for the surface. I popped out of the water like a cork and I remember just sucking air. Ahh, it felt so good, so sweet!”
He touched his eye reflexively.
“But then I noticed I was blind in my right eye and that scared the shit out of me. I couldn’t see where I was and the waves kept on battering me. There was blood in the water everywhere around me and I knew I was in deep trouble. I don’t know how long this carried on for, but I just went into a kind of stupor. Then I felt Ron lifting me onto a board and he started pushing me out of the impact zone. I remember saying to him, ‘I’m blind, I’m blind,’ but he just kept on telling me that it’s ok over and over again, like he didn’t believe it. That’s when I knew that I was in pretty bad shape. It took forever to get to the ship, like in a nightmare. I don’t know how they got me up the ladder and onto the deck, the next I remember was your face looking down at me, like I was the antichrist.” He chuckled.
I remember feeling ice cold as I watched Ron and Francois carry Gavin towards me where I was waiting for them in the stern. Blood was streaming from Gavin’s head and I knew that we had no equipment or facilities to deal with a serious head injury. If there was bleeding inside the skull, Gavin could die within hours. As the ship’s doctor, I felt very alone. As we laid him down on the table where we usually played cards, I was praying that Gavin had been dealt a good hand. His face was streaming with blood and his scalp was hanging down over his face like a curtain, obscuring his right eye and revealing patches of white skull on his forehead. Gavin had been scalped by his own surfboard. He had knocked two of the fins that were glassed onto his big-wave board clean off with his head. That takes some doing. I knew that the force required to do this kind of damage was enough to cause serious brain injuries.
“What a relief it was when you lifted that piece of skin that covered my eye and I could see out of it again!” Gavin gave a rare smile.
“Ja, I was just as glad,” I laughed. “It was amazing how few serious injuries you actually had, given the way you looked.”
“Yeah, you just kept on telling me how lucky I was and I was thinking, ‘If that’s what you call lucky I don’t want to see the unlucky bastards you’ve treated!’”
“And then we had that marathon suturing session. It took at least an hour to put you back together again. All by torchlight! But look at you now; I think I actually might have improved your looks somewhat!”
Actually, Gavin resembled a resurrected evil mummy. I had put in countless sutures to get the scalp back into place. It looked like someone had attempted a brain transplant on him. For the next few days Gavin wandered about the ship with a haphazardly shaved head, a massively swollen blue eye and bandages twisted about his face. Frankenstein’s monster would have been scared of him. It’s a pity we had no pirates or unwanted officials on board. We had the perfect deterrent for them!
