Honolulu Lite
Sandy’s can be
a pain in the neckBack in my high school days there was this wave-riding contraption called a "surf mat," a rigid canvas-skinned blow-up contrivance, which, after you wiped out riding it, could be used to carry your body to the waiting ambulance.
That's if an ambulance was waiting. In those days, ambulances were only called for serious beach injuries, like when your head became separated from your neck.
Surf mats were designed for gentle waves and should never be used in hard-slamming, neck-snapping shorebreaks like Sandy Beach. As I kick-paddled out into the lineup at Sandy's that morning long ago, it would have been nice if someone had told me that. This was before the beaches were populated with all manner of warning signs and lifeguards were posted every few yards so that personal injury attorneys in the parking lot could not get a good view of the mayhem occurring just off shore.
There were warning signs, but they were kind of vague. I recall one stuck in the sand at Sunset Beach on a particularly gnarly high-surf day that said: "Hey. Whatever." Lifeguards were not as into preemptive action as they are today. Back then, they seemed to subscribe to the philosophy that "experience is the best teacher" and there's nothing like a near-death experience to teach you to keep your butt out of the water the next time.
So I'm paddling out on my surf mat, a Nylon line attached to the mat wrapped several times around my wrist. I had done that so that in an emergency the mat could not get away from me, not considering the possibility that I might want to get away from the mat.
A set of waves came marching in. A big set. An enormous set. A set that was going to break onto everyone in the lineup. But while the body surfers simply prepared to dive under the oncoming onslaught, I feverishly tried to extricate myself from the Bobbing Surf Mat of Death. I pulled and tugged on the Nylon line, but could not get free. The first wave jacked up and I futilely tried to dive under it, anchored to the surface by the inflated mat. The odds of the mat being perfectly situated to catch the wave by itself were astronomical but it was my lucky day. The mat was sucked over the falls and I was dragged like a hooked marlin along with it.
I'm not sure whether my arm dislocated on the ride down or when we smashed into the hard sand bottom. In any case, the point was moot because all the air was driven from my lungs and breathing became the prime preoccupation.
Somehow I ended up lying on the beach next to the deflated mat. I popped my arm back into the socket and went home.
I thought of this fateful ride after reading the Star-Bulletin's recent double page spread on Sandy Beach, the beach with the highest rate of broken necks and backs in the nation. The gist of the article is that Sandy's is a very, very dangerous place. I concur.
Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com