It is all about Hugs!
By Craig Changstrom
Edited by Sarah Mulder
Coach Doug Coach asked me to write a short story on my recent near death experience during a sailing vacation in Antiqua. The experience itself is part of the story, but once you survive the experience, you wonder why me? Why did we survive? How can I communicate to my family and friends how important they are to me and how special life really is?
I will begin by saying, we are truly blessed! I went to see my physician, fellow Masters swimmer and sailboat captain, Peter, who looked at me as he shook his head and said, “You are one lucky guy!” You see, a wave capsized five of us in a Zodiac dinghy on the way back to our Catamaran on the Caribbean island of Barbuda on a moonless night. We had just celebrated the Broncos Super Bowl victory and now 48 hours later we headed back to the Cat, anchored in what should have been a quiet bay in front of 17 miles of uninhabited beach known as Pink Strand beach. Barbuda is some 40 miles from Antiqua (where the closest medical services are located).
The evening began with four couples out to a lobster dinner across the estuary on the other side of Barbuda island. Dinner was great as we toasted another beautiful Caribbean sunset. Post-sunset I thought to myself, wow is it dark outside, as the new moon slid below the horizon. Around 8 p.m. we finished dinner and it was time to return to the Catamaran. We had a 20-minute car ride from the restaurant and a 15-minute boat ride across the estuary to our dinghy where we were confronted with an angry sea and building waves. The first group of three made it back to the Catamaran, leaving the five of us on shore for the next trip across.
The two ladies sat on the bottom of the dinghy and the other husband and I pushed the dinghy simultaneously on the port and starboard side as the driver of the dinghy floored the 9.8 hp engine. As I sat on the port gunnel feeling relieved that we were heading back to the boat and had cleared the waves, a wave crashed over the front of the dinghy and ejected all five of us. Four ejected out the starboard side and I on the port side. The force of the wave tossed the captain out of the dinghy with the motor full throttle. The empty dinghy swung to the right where the prop made 5 rotations on my right rib, then moved to the underside of my left arm and elbow. As I fought to come above water I was face-to-face with a whirling demon of an empty dinghy and an angry motor rapidly going in 360 degree circles.
My first thought was to move away from the beast and where was Linda (my wife)?!
The dinghy inched out away from the shore with every full prop rotation and I quickly found Linda, clear of the boat and able to swim to shore. I saw the captain, he was ok, but recognized that the other woman was in trouble. She wore a heavy backpack and was unable to move toward the shore, caught in the turbulence of the whitewater. I swam to her and her husband and helped her safely to shore. Everyone accounted for, we were thankful to get to land as we assessed the situation. In the distance the sound of the dinghy became more faded as it moved out to sea.
We were lucky somehow; to all make it to shore. Adrenaline is a powerful drug, it was only then that I realized I was bleeding across my ribs and my left arm. The prop had cut me in three places…how was it that all three were mostly glancing blows? The most serious cut was my elbow, where we placed a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. How is it that five people ejected from a dinghy were all are able to get safely away from the whirling demon? We sat in shock for the longest while on the empty beach.
What now? How do we communicate to the three people on the Cat? Can we swim back tonight, in this normally calm bay, now rolling in 2 to 3 foot waves? I was so thankful Linda was with me, she always comes prepared, and in her dry bag had a sweatshirt and a jacket. These two simple items became priceless as we faced a long night on the beach. I gave her a hug. The wounds stopped bleeding as we made our way down the shore about 1.5 miles to be perpendicular to the Cat and attempt to signal them with the one flashlight that survived the capsizing.
We signaled the Cat, they signaled back. All rather fruitless as they did not know what we tried to convey. Our group talked about swimming to the Cat with one of the 2 lifejackets worn by the ladies and rejected that idea as too dangerous. Our captain had a working phone and began a series of phone calls in an attempt to contact the three people on the Cat via the Cat’s home port in Antiqua. Skype worked poorly with intermittent success. The home port could ascertain our exact position via our GPS signal on the strand between the estuary and the ocean, and wanted to know if we needed helicopter evacuation. We told them no. We then used Skype to link up with the Barbuda police, who indicated that they were unable to help unless it was via helicopter evacuation. We were wet, cold and it was only 11 p.m.; it is going to be a long night.
We were on Pink Strand’s sand until dawn — sand is really hard and sucks the warmth right out of you, and now some of us faced hypothermia. We took stock of what we had: wet clothes, two life jackets, one working flashlight, one sweatshirt and one rain jacket. We placed the life jackets on the sand, each of us trying to get some portion of our butt on a life jacket, as we huddled back-to-back attempting to share body warmth across the five of us. The night lasted forever as we attempted to ward off shivering fits. Slowly the hours went by, knowing that the sun would not come until about 6:21 a.m..
Finally the sun rose and we moved around to warm up, with two of us walking down the beach to a mirage thinking a miracle occurred and the dingy had washed back ashore. At last it was only a tree stump. Around 8 a.m. we made the decision that the other two men in the group would swim for the boat with the lifejackets in tow. My ulnar nerve in the elbow was cut by the prop and I was unable to swim. The other three of us made the decision to make our way slowly back down the beach to the opposite side of the strand where a dock is located to ferry tourists to the Barbuda town.
It was about 9:30 a.m. when we arrived at the dock, and we were fortunate to find a boat driver willing to take us back out through the estuary, out and around to Pink Strand Bay which was more than an hour long boat ride. We arrived back to the Cat around 10:30 a.m., all feeling very lucky!
The accident has caused me to reflect, about how important it is to take care of your family and yourself every single day. Think about who you are and where you are going, and what you stand for. Look out after one another, and be sure to hug your friends and family each and every day.
I can’t tell you why I survived. I do know that my swimming contributed to saving my own life and another’s, and that the value of a life jacket is priceless. As for communicating to my family and friends how important they are to me? A hug is a good place to start.