Sketchiest situation you've been in?

my friends and i surfed at dusk during a lighting storm in costa rica, im not gona go into details but it was pretty damn sketchy. in the same week we also surfed withes rock after seeing heavy crocs in the line up, but that was more dumb than sketchy...

 

Almost got sucked into a "hole" at the end of a jetty, wave passed by and I felt this uncomfortable backward pull, paddled as hard as I could got away, looked over my shoulder and realized I would have be toast if I got pulled in.

Second, not really sketchy just ****ty, over the falls, under my longboard, under the wave, fins into shin, = 50 stitches, 18 outside, 30 something inside, now infected, most likely will spend the day in the hospital tomorrow. Sucks a$$ I'll be out for awhile!

 

yeeeesh thats gnarly

 

ahhh ha ha ha ........... Pipe

 

pure genius

 

WoW that's nassty wound hope all goes well @ the hospital tomorrow

 

is this real life?

 

man good luck with that wound, looks pretty intense.

 

not quite in the water...

I'll go....

My buddy Eric & I stayed at a brand-new place just outside of San Juan del Sur in Nicaragua. (In fact, this place lodged the entire crew & cast of 'Survivor' as the series filmed in Nica.)

First day in-country, we surfed it up pretty good. By evening, we were both wiped from the Central American sun & lots of clean, peeling 6 foot waves. We called it an early night. Eric downstairs in the bedroom just off the kitchen, me in the upstairs loft-like bedroom.

Around 1230am I kinda slowly become conscious to someone yelling. I figure that it's someone outside the unit, drunk or something. I vaguely become aware, through the haze of sleep, of my name. How strange is that, I'm thinking. Someone's bellowing 'Mike, Mike.' WTF, that sounds like Eric. I jump out of bed & go out to the top of the stairs & look down on a surreal scene going on in the living room area.

Eric is standing up & grappling with some dude. The dude looks like a local Nica, he's dressed in dark blue pants & a white long-sleeve collared shirt. He looks almost like a security guard or something, at first glance. WTF. He IS a security guard ! I see his gun & radio on his belt as he's pushing & shoving Eric.

As I run down the stairs to get into the action, the dude sees me coming & moves backwards from Eric & starts to unholster his gun. F*** that! I smash my fists into his face, repeatedly, knock him down, blood flows (his),

I'm yelling at Eric to get his gun. Eric grabs the gun. Gives it to me. I'm holding the gun on the guy, asking WTF is going on here ?

Eric says he was sound asleep & woke up to a shadow figure in his bedroom, going through his wallet & taking money. He jumped up & grappled with the guy, and the yend up in the living room & Eric's hollering my name to come help.

Weird(er) moment. While Eric is gone to get help, I have an almost overpowering urge to shoot the thief in his knee. Just to see what that feels like to shoot someone, just to feel the power. Like I said: it was a strange night.

So I'm holding the pistol on this guy & he's bleeding from the mouth where I clocked him & he's pleading in Spanish for us not to call the police. F*** that. Thievin' prick. Eric goes out & after 20 mins finally gets the manager to get his fat arse up to our unit - the developer happened to be there too & he came up to see what was going on.

Here's the (really) creepy part. We explain what happened. The developer takes the security guard away. Then brings him back to hear the guard's side of it. And the guard has his gun back! And we demand to get moved to a different unit. Developer moves us. He asks what he can do for us. We say, bring us beer & rum. And we're def not paying for the condo stay. No prob.

So we stay up all night in the condo, drinking rum & beer & laughing & me icing my hand where I must have punched the guard in his head when we were going at it & my hand is swollen as hell.

We had a long, restless night....we feared that the guard, being a local Nica, is gonna bring in the extended family & wipe us out. We barricaded the doors & windows with couches & chairs & we dozed off just before dawn with large knives at our sides. Just in case.

Dawn finally arrived. We threw our gear in the 4wd & prepared to get the hell outta Dodge. No way were we sticking around to see what this dude's relatives were gonna do to the 2 gringos. The developer saw us as we were leaving & pleaded with us not to post any bad reviews or reports of what happened to us on his property on the Internet. We just shook our heads in disgust & split.

Eric went over to the Corn Islands to check it out. I went back home to get my hand checked: broken thumb from an errant punch to the dude's skull.

Quite a night.

 

Ditto on the dusk session in a lightning storm in Costa Rica!

I've had so many sketchy sessions it's tough to pick the winner. The Costa Rica session stands out though because it was in a foreign locale.

 

that's some crazy ****...should of beat the hell out of that guy. shooting him in the knee is a bit far, but some solid ass kicking was definetly in store for that worthless piece of humanity

 

Climbing down a 30 meter cliff with a board to surf a freight train left point on a shallow reef. It was my 30th B-day weekend and I wanted to dodge the crowds and do something epic. Even at a few feet overhead I wanted no part of the sets on the point. Injury meant re-climbing the cliff or a mile paddle to the nearest inhabited beach. Only an hour or so before dark. The ocean goes from the deepest point in the world to a reef covered by maybe two foot of water. I catch a few waves sitting just down from the point and then BUMP. For a moment I was too scared to look down. No way that just happened. No way I just saw what I think I just saw. Please tell me that was a coral head and not a submerged dorsal fin and a tail I just cruise by. Not sure... had reef booties on. Scan the water surface...nothing. Do a shallow duck dive and look around.. nothing. Wait. The reef is fairly flat. Don't even care what the next wave is looking like... closeout...deathpit... whatever ...I'm on it. Probably the fastest I've ever paddled in my life. Scrapping fins or stepping on urchins I was getting out of the water fast. Watch from the beach...nothing. Get lost in the jungle trying to find my way back to the trail up the cliff make it up as the last rays of sun are fading. Not sure what to believe I had to go back the next day and do it again. I'm not one to spook easily. Surfed it no problem as the swell was dieing. Talking to a local a short time later he was surprised I surfed there. Turns out just off the reef is a favorite spearfishing spot and quote "sharky as hell".

 

Mines more stupid than sketchy...

I just got into surfing, probably about 16 or 17 and had no idea what I was doing. Paddled out in January in a 3/2 with no hood because I forgot it and thought I was invincible. Waves were probably a little under head high with a few bigger sets rolling though. I somehow managed to get out with out having to duck dive, caught a wave or two and on one of the paddles back out I got creamed trying to avoid duck diving and paddling over the top. Just went up, over and smashed over the falls with the board on my chest taking the full force of the wave. I hit bottom, let go of my board, came up for air and got smashed again. I came up from that one, got smashed again and also realized my leash snapped and my board was being carried to shore. By this time I had an ice cream headache to kill all headaches and I could tell I wasn't in a good spot. The adrenaline kicked in and I swam in to shore and puked all over the beach. Learned some good lessons about respecting the ocean that day.

 

that looks like my leg!!

 

That's a great pic...

 

A big winter swell in Florida... of all places... as a kid. Really stormy and disorganized and breaking WAY outside at Patricks AFB. First time I'd ever surfed there, and there was a lot of sweeping current and chaos. The guy I went with didn't even make the paddle out, and it took me forever. Finally made it out... all by myself. Took off on a suicide bomb, and my leash broke. Looked up and couldn't see my board anywhere. Started to swim... looked up to see my friend on the beach... a speck... pointing. Started to swim hard... kept drifting down the beach. Started to panic. Kept looking up to see my friend jogging up the beach to keep pace with me drifting. Swam as hard as I could for a LONG time, and finally made it to the beach and puked. For a while there, I really didn't know what was gonna happen to me or where I'd end up. Felt like I drifted about a mile... at least in my head.

 

Central FL for me too,late 90's. Just south of Jupiter. Solid NE groundswell with a rip pulling alot of water south. After a few hours, tide and rip changing quick. I get caught sleeping with my eyes open. The rip pulls me into the swimming beach marker and my leash wraps. I get pulled under real quick. My only good chance is to pull the pin on my leash at the ankle strap. I love that invention. Saved my ass.
On the stupidity level.....I have mentioned the south swell in Waikiki in '95. I never should have gave up my board. I should have strapped the two boards together and floated with the two girls. Wait to be rescued. Dumb move on my part. Got really lucky that day.

 

Yankee,..that's a f'n nightmare....glad you escaped unharmed. Way too close.

Ginsumagic.......brutal......hang in there.........good luck to a speedy recovery....