Water Safety

Laird Hamilton aids Brett Lickle during monster session

Surfersvillage Global Surf News, 7 December, 2007 : - - Tow-in surfers Brett Lickle and Laird Hamilton were catching some of the biggest waves ever ridden Monday. Lickle said 80-footers were thundering at Outer Sprecks off Maui. History was in the making. And that's when things went wrong.

Lickle and Hamilton, along with John Denny and Sierra Emory, decided to challenge Outer Sprecks a second time that day after a successful morning. "We'd surfed all morning and came back out," Lickle said. "The surf had almost doubled." Lickle towed Hamilton into a wave, the second of a mountainous five-wave set. "The bomb set of all sets," as Lickle described it. A huge wall of water. "I'll say 40-foot Hawaiian," Lickle said. That's an 80-foot face.

"He was riding the wave, and all the sudden he kicked out and I'm like, 'Oh, my God,'" Lickle said. He raced the Jet Ski toward Hamilton. "We'd had a pretty clear zone to get out, but the area where we normally get out was all white water. A 20-foot closeout," Lickle said. "We realized we weren't going to make it, and eventually the thing caught up and just annihilated me."

Along with that pounding, the thin, aluminum fins of a tow-in board severed Lickle's calf muscle. Blood gushed into the ocean. Wave after wave rolled over, separating and nearly drowning the two. "We went through a four- or five-wave hold-down," Lickle said, explaining how surfers get crushed by the wave, go under, hold their breath for a minute and come up, only to be hammered again and again. He said Hamilton told him that he was thinking Lickle wasn't going to make it.

Lickle said the surf washed them a quarter-mile in from the impact point, and he knew something was very wrong with his leg. "The whole calf has been ripped in half, just hanging there," Lickle said. "Then, all the sudden, Laird shows up. He had a long-sleeved wet suit on. He tore that off and used the sleeve as a tourniquet."

Lickle said at that point, big-wave rider Dave Kalama and helicopter pilot Don Shear of Windward Aviation were scouting the coastline for waves. The two passed overhead but didn't spot them. So Hamilton decided to swim for the ski. "Now I've got to worry about the big boy," Lickle said, meaning sharks.  Once Hamilton got to the Jet Ski, about a 15-minute swim in heavy water, according to Lickle's estimate, the two had radio contact with the helicopter.

Read the full article by Joe Edwards at the Star Bulletin

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Source: Star Bulletin

Team - Surfersvillage