Posted on 12/31/2004 4:52:11 PM PST by Flavius
HIKKADUWA, Sri Lanka (Reuters) - British surfer Martin Markwell had always dreamed of catching that perfect wave -- but when it finally came along, it was a nightmare.
Markwell was paddling on his surfboard Sunday off the popular Hikkaduwa beach resort on Sri Lanka's palm-fringed southern coast when he was swept up by a tsunami wave and sent crashing over a white sand beach and into a hotel restaurant.
"It was really terrible because I was surfing, I was really surfing on a wave I wasn't supposed to be on," he told Reuters.
"As an experienced surfer, when I saw the wave come I realized something was wrong, but I couldn't escape because my surfboard was tied to my ankle."
His wife Vicki and son Jake looked on in horror from a hotel balcony as he crashed toward the shore. Miraculously, he stayed atop his board until he reached the hotel, jumped off and waded to safety as the ocean rolled back to feed a much larger tsunami wave on its way.
The family regrouped and ran inland into jungle to safety just minutes before a giant tsunami wave 30 feet high crashed into Sri Lanka's coast, killing more than 28,500 people.
the waves at wiaimia bay on the North Shore of Oahu in Hawaii were on average 40 ft high about six weeks ago. They staged an international surfing championship to ride those waves. There were plenty of entrees.
Does Mr. Markwell need a bra?
He does look a bit bigger than Mrs. Markwell and she probably wears one....
Fun book. So was "The Mote in God's Eye."
***Yeah, and how did he jump off if the board was tied to his ankle?***
Oh you darn non-believers! Didn't you hear? A sword fish arrived on the same tsunami and through the greatest of coincidences happened to saw off the 8-inch rope around his ankle.
sarc/off
Please. Some of you people need some a dose of tsunami reality.
On the beach, the guy would have to surf on churning whitewater in the front part of the wave, which would be about 15 feet high and moving about 20 mph. That's obviously doable. If you look at the videos, you can see that riding in the front part of that wave wouldn't be much different from coming in on the foam after the break of a larger ordinary wave-- the ride would just last a lot longer, and carry you farther up the beach. I see no reason to doubt the guy's story.
The story says that the *next* wave was 30 feet high, but the surfer didn't ride that wave. He had met his family and moved to higher ground by that point. Still, 30 feet is almost surely an overestimation. Even if it weren't, there's no reason a person couldn't ride in front of that wave, either.
Tsunamis are very dangerous, but not for the reasons that many of you seem to think: they hit the land at enormous speeds, or they're incredibly high. They're dangerous because they're like giant, ten-foot deep flash floods that suddenly appear everywhere. That much water floats cars, knocks people over, smashes buildings, etc., but not because the wave is moving at 100 mph or something. The water's devastating because even a large volume of slow moving water can move just about anything. Look at the videos. The water's only moving 10-15 mph. Still, that's enough to wreak havoc. But a person could easily swim or paddleboard in the water. The problem is that there's no place to get out, the water's cold, you get slammed into debris or something, or you get pulled back out to sea.
Women give floral offering for 'Yemanja' the Goddess of the Sea, at the Copacabana beach, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Friday, Dec 31, 2004. People dance, sing and carry flowers into the water, giving them to Yemanja, asking for good luck for the New Year 2005. Yemanja is the Goddess of the Sea, African slaves from the Yoruba region brought their beliefs of Yemanja to Brazil. (AP Photo/Douglas Engle)
Yeah I agree it smells. Besides how is it possible to surf a wave that does not even form a curler at all but acts more like a flash flood?
Details, details. Don't you know every surfer carries a pocket knife in his PJs?
Pull the velcro tab.
I'm still skeptical of this account.
If you have seen much of the footage, and have some knowledge of surfing, you would understand that this could very well have happened. I have seen numerous clips from this horrible event that showed very survivable waves hitting the beach. Most of the wave shots show them after they have broken in deeper water but two clips stick in my mind as very ridable, open faced waves that could actually be fun, up until the point they slam into the palm trees and buildings. The leash attached to his leg is held in place by a velcro band and would definely be a pure b**ch to remove in the huge wall of soupy whitewater that would be bouncing him towards shore.
My confidence in the above statements comes from the 30-plus years of surfing that I have experienced, and my surf travels in the affected part of the world. The people affected by this terrible event are some of the most honest and hard working people in the world and deserve all of the support that we can provide.
That's the same scene that came to MY mind when I heard this...[g]
Can we get a Dick Dale guitar riff ping for this guy? Awesome, Doooooood!
Hey, doncha like how the wave was thoughtful enough to bring him right to the very place he was staying. Also I heard there wasn't a whole lot of time in between waves for him to get the wife and kid (who just happened to see dad surfing in) and manage to run to safety.
Beautiful story.
Hopefully we hear more of such stories.
I don't think it is so far fetched if he was an experienced surfer.
The videos give me a totally different impression. I know what you mean. Surge marches onto shore with unforeseen power and grace, snatches 100,000 lives or more, and creeps back where it stayed for decades. Never thought I'd witness such a thing in my lifetime, even from a great distance.
The problem with those children of Occam among you is an appalling lack of imagination, which evidently simplifies both memory and research.
Every surfer remembers that it was the legendary Peruvian, Felipe Pomar, who is the only surfer - before Markwell - known to have surfed a tsunami. That was in 1970. His ride was intentional, following an earthquake off the Peruvian coast. He said in an interview years later that he's never surfed again, but I don't know whether the terror he reported eventually subsided.
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:y6H5paVEPXUJ:www.wavehunters.com/peru/peru.asp+tsunami+peru+surfer&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
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