Two men and a boat… How bad could it be?

I was at a dinner once with three of my friends in Miami and I was asked:

Do you have any crazy stories?

Thinking about it …. most of the last five years of my life have been pretty crazy. In 2011 I had the option to start a career in London but I knew the world was bigger and I wanted to explore it… and luckily I jumped in with both feet.

Since then I have had two careers, worked all over the world from Australia to Alaska….. I had the opportunity as a personal trainer to coach hundreds of people. As a guide in the Caribbean Tax and Duty Free industry I presented to hundreds of thousands, sold millions of dollars worth of products, had some awesome/some mental girlfriends…. And made some incredible friends.

Throughout all of that ….this is one story that I can tell you… legally….

 

January 2012,

I was working as a personal trainer onboard a cruise ship that was operating out of Sydney, Australia doing cruises throughout the Pacific Islands, New Zealand and Fiji. It was very hard but a great job, super challenging…. Taught me how to look after clients, use soft skills and how to drive a business. I was even teaching yoga and pilates, after a couple of courses in Watford from an insane 5ft 2 yoga-Nazi named Stella. She often referred to herself in the third person and she liked to point out that I had the flexibility of Shrek. The only other guy that was suffering more of Stella’s wrath was a giant Bulgarian powerlifter called Georgi. After a lot of work our flexibility improved dramatically and we became pretty proficient. Shrek was eventually limber.

 

Fast forward to March 13, 2012:

I had been working all week and finally it was my day off and the ship was docked in Mare, New Caledonia that is in the South Pacific. There is very little to do on the South Pacific Islands, like Wala, Lifou, Isle of Pines. The exception being Noumea which is run by the French and is purged for its Lithium reserves. However the beaches are incredible. Imagine postcard white sand as far as you can see and the most incredible light blue waters. Therefore on my day off in Mare there was only one destination…..Yejele beach.

I met my buddy Kyle, a Canadian and the company videographer down on the beach. We decided to go and explore the bay. We found the ultimate transportation device ….. sea kayaks.

This is where it starts to get stupid. Kyle decided that the safest place to leave his $8000 ???? ships’ video camera was under the watchful eye of two beach ridden hungover bogan (chav/redneck) Aussie girls.

After securing the camera under a towel we strolled over to one of the threadbare locals cracking coconuts and paid $10 for our gear to go and explore this beautiful looking bay. We got two open top kayaks, a paddle each and lifejackets. We didn’t realize then how much we would need those life jackets and how useless they would be.

So there we were, two 24-year-old idiots paddling around this epic little South Pacific bay on our day off. We were really living the life, basking in the sun in the 40 degree heat, checking out all the exotic fish. Life was beyond great, this is what I did this job for! Until we encountered challenges and when I mean challenges, I mean a reef, giant waves, near death, a fishing boat, the French Island police and a helicopter, but all that comes later.

Looking further out to the bay we see these big white top waves that were slowly getting bigger and bigger. These waves aren’t rolling in. These big brutes are crashing into a hidden reef that at the time we couldn’t see. Just before these tumbling walls of death we saw this rock sticking out that seemed to mark the edge of the calm waters.

 

Being responsible I made the executive decision and shouted to Kyle in my best English

 

“if we go past that rock, I think we might be f@cked……let’s stay this side of the rock”

 

I get a typical Canadian ”yeah bro, water looks a little choppy.. good idea’….

 

Well this story would be sh@t if we had just paddled around and gone home, so we obviously paddled passed the previously stated rock and into what felt like a barrel of drowning hell, but before that…

 

We messed around a little bit on the smaller waves clueless as to what challenge was about to pass… and suddenly a bigger wave reached us….we got turned.. then broadsided… knocked out of the kayaks … realized the under current was so strong that we passed the previously mentioned rock within seconds and we were in the barrel of drowning death.

 

Within seconds, waves were hitting us, waves so big that they were burying us deep underwater. At first I thought ok, we are in a little bit of trouble here …

 

Then I lost my kayak…..

 

“Ok we are in more trouble…”

 

Waves so strong the lifejacket came off… I lost my life jacket….

 

“Ok … yep in a lot of trouble today”

 

The waves were rolling in and dragging us deep underwater. The waves were getting bigger and I was getting buried deeper and deeper. I remember counting the time it took to swim to the surface after each wave hit and it was taking me longer reach the surface to get air. I was trying not to panic. I would get so tossed around by the crashing waves that I wouldn’t know which way was up or down.

 

I remember thinking we were both in deep shit. I was definitely on the brink of drowning and genuinely thought that if I took a wave wrong without getting my breath I would have drowned. The only thought I had was.

 

“tighten your shorts… then if you drown and wash up on the beach… at least you won’t lose your shorts”

 

I didn’t fancy dying naked, the water was warm.. but it wasn’t that warm!

 

Kyle was about twenty metres away from me and had managed to grab a kayak in one hand and his lifejacket had been ripped off too and he was hanging on to it with him other. We were both in trouble and I tried to swim to him between waves crashing in, but the current was so strong it took me forever.

 

I desperately needed to get to Kyle and share his kayak or life jacket. We were shouting at each other between waves. I didn’t want him to leave my sight. If he left and I didn’t get to him I was convinced I was going to drown.

 

I would take a breath… get smashed by a wave…. Swim back up…. Try and get closer to Kyle… take another breath…. Get smashed by a wave…. Repeat .. repeat…repeat..

 

I was in the swim team as a teenager and I am comfortable in water but I was getting exhausted. After an age I eventually got to Kyle and we both grabbed hold of the front of the kayak … and part of the lifejacket.

 

Here was the problem we faced… there was a reef in front of us and we had to get over it to get back to the beach, back to semi-civilisation get that $8k camera off the beach and back to the ship. But the reef was going to kill us in the process.

 

We were going to get smashed on that reef it was too dangerous to stay on it. So what did we do?? Being smart, obviously we climbed on to it. Somehow we took the waves and tried to get over it but the undercurrent was so strong it was knocking us off our feet.

 

The only option was to scrap going back to the beach, drift out to sea and get back the island on another bay. I would like to think we chose that option but we didn’t really have a choice. The undercurrent pulled us back through the thundering waves we had just survived. We got smashed up again but we managed to hold onto the kayak and the lifejacket and we were pulled into calmer water. I have never felt power like that undercurrent, quite easily dragging grown men wherever it wanted to go.

 

So we were both just about floating but we were exhausted. Kyle was lying in his kayak. I was in the water bobbing around holding onto the side when suddenly I had this scratching pain come across my chest and down one of my legs. We had drifted into jellyfish. Now my leg was numb with pain and I was struggling to swim. Immediately Kyle pulled me into his one-person kayak and we just lay there getting our bearings.

 

So we drifted around for a little bit and by now we were struggling to see the beach. We must have been 400metres off shore. So we resigned to the fact that we aren’t going back to the island of Mare that way. On a good note we found my lost kayak so at least we had one each.

 

Whilst getting beaten the hell out of by the South Pacific sun, we spotted a far away beach to our right where we could get to another part of the island. The only problem was that we had no paddles and we were moving at a snails pace, paddling the boats by hand this would take all day and night.

 

We were definitely not going to get there in the next four hours, which means we would miss the cruise ship we would get left behind with the locals and we would both get fired. We were already resigned to the fact that the cruise line would probably fire us.

 

We paddled and paddled and paddled towards a distant beach for what seemed like forever but we weren’t going anywhere fast, we were both suffering we were getting worse.

 

Over the horizon we saw a little speck travelling fast that was getting bigger and bigger. This tiny boat came speeding towards us over the horizon. It was a little fishing boat with two giant outboard motors going hell for leather straight at us.

 

Somehow the local people on the beach had raised the alarm that there were two idiots drowning just outside their beloved bay, this had made it by radio back to our ships captain. Who decided to kindly order us a rescue, and the closest vessel to us was a little fishing boat! What we didn’t know until later was that El Capitan was now on the radio working on a back up option… a helicopter rescue. I am glad the company was paying the bills.

 

This little tin boat eventually reached us and were get hauled aboard this by some leathery French-speaking Islanders. These dudes were built big, with hands like saucepans, shoulders wider than a fridge freezer and legs like tree trunks, it must have been the tuna and the yams. Whilst we were happy to see them as they easily hauled us onboard they didn’t seem too impressed to see these half drowned, board short wearing idiots.

 

The big outboards fire up and lying on the bottom of this fishing boat we were zoomed over to a distant bay. Waiting for us at the shore was the ships doctor, Jason. He was a nice South African guy, he tried talking to us and examined our wounds from the reef and the jellyfish but we just lay on the beach exhausted coughing up seawater. Kyle and I were just looking at each other like “did we just do that?”

 

I was convinced we were going to be fired by the cruise line. Reckless endangerment ashore will qualify crew for dismissal; a fishing boat in the shore Pacific had just rescued us, we were about to run into the French police and unbeknownst to us there was a helicopter that had just been waved off.

We recovered a little and Kyle mentioned that he didn’t care if we were fired. At least we were alive. I couldn’t argue with him!

 

The ships doctor put us in the back of a Jeep and drove us passed Yejele beach. We had to stop to rescue the ship’s camera from the Aussie girls hiding it under a towel on the beach. The entire beach of cruise ship guests was fixated on us. Two pale, bleeding half drowned idiots dragging a big TV camera. A young Aussie bloke came up to us and asked if we were the two lads getting “surf f@cked” on a reef. Apparently thats a technical term in Australia. All we could do was nod and hobble along.

 

We drove all the way back to the cruise ship port. Obviously everyone now knew about the two drowning crewmembers and the port was buzzing with activity. Imagine a thousand people trying to get back onboard a ship at once!

 

If the day couldn’t get any worse we then got arrested by two French policeman. They were in the warm weather uniforms and looked hilarious in their berets and tight khaki shorts. Despite our situation I couldn’t help but laugh, now they were pissed. Like angry Frenchman pissed.

 

They confiscated our ships security ID’s preventing us from getting back to the boat and started having a go at us in French. Obviously we thought this was very funny and we kept on laughing, which they didn’t appreciate. Sh@t sense of humour the French!

 

So we were in deep shit, sat on these chairs getting questioned by the South Pacific Gendarme in front of 1000 passengers. When over strolls our gigantic 6ft4 Welsh security officer (aka SECO). This guy was responsible for the entire cruise ships’ security, he was ex-Royal Navy, tattooed to the gills and generally did not f@ck about. I had never spoken to him but I knew he was Welsh because he had once taken his shirt off in the crew bar (he was Royal Navy) and had “Wales” affectionately tattooed around his belly button like a life ring.

 

The Welsh security officer took one look at us; two half drowned rats and half grinned. He must have seen two younger versions of himself from his Navy days. He did not like the short-wearing Gendarmes giving us a hard time, that was his job and he didn’t want to share the fun. So he snatched the security cards away from the French police and demanded we be released or the ship would never come back and spend its money in Mare again.

 

Five minutes later we were onboard the ship in the medical centre getting properly checked out. Both of us were shredded from the reef.

 

An hour later we were in front of the Hotel Director explaining our behavior and trying to save our jobs. This didn’t last long as we were both turned around and kicked out of his office as soon we went through the door. Our fate was to be decided at a later date.

 

That evening I had a meeting with the HR manager. He was an English guy and little did I know that he was a mad man that had been through a few scrapes in his own trips ashore. He had been walking though some hills on a trip ashore in Colombia (pretty sketchy idea) a few years prior and had been mugged and stabbed. He took sympathy over our incident and saw the bright side that Kyle and I were still alive.

 

He soon backed me up in front of the Captain and sold the whole disaster as a “Great test of our emergency response within the South Pacific.” Our emergency response was to send a fishing boat ?! Thank god they didn’t use the helicopter, the bill would have been ridiculous!

 

So Kyle and I were now famous onboard our ship and across our fleet of ships as the two clowns that were rescued by a fishing boat in the South Pacific. The ships’ Captain and the Fleet Commodore (fleet captain) knew us personally and would often remind me how much of an inconvenience we were. When you work onboard a ship of over 3,000 people this is basically like having God (the Captain) remind you that he thinks you are a dick and that he doesn’t like you. Apparently the amount of paperwork the deck officers’ had to do after the incident was up to their ears.

 

I called home that week to check-in with my family. Everyone was good but when I asked about my younger brother I found out that a Range Rover had hit him whilst he was crossing the street. He is lucky to be alive and had to have some serious reconstructive knee surgery but he’s good now. So my family almost lost both of us in one week. I decided I needed to calm down a bit, but that lasted about two weeks.

 

Over the next few years, my career(s)took me around the world from days spent in Fiji, Sydney, Brisbane and Auckland, to learning about diamond cutting in New York, going to Alaska, crashing parties in Vegas, spring breaks in Mexico, and visiting pretty much every island in the Caribbean along the way.

 

However, nearly drowning in the South Pacific was one of the craziest adventures I have ever had. I check in with Kyle every year and see how he is doing.

 

“Do you fancy a boating holiday mate? I know of a place?”

 

His response is a resolute: “F@ck no….!”