Lofting Accident – Mullaloo Beach, Perth

I’m writing this from my hospital bed, lucky to be alive and ashamed to be telling the tail. I hope others may learn from my error of judgment and perhaps question in future whether enthusiasm is ever clouding their judgment about conditions.

Saturday 5 June 2004, was stormy conditions in Perth, but about 3:30pm at Mullalloo beach the wind dropped right off to about 10-15 knots. There were two other guys visiting from Brisbane (in hindsight with no local knowledge) putting up their kite so I decided that was enough numbers and went to get mine. I’d just bought a new wet suit that morning and was keen to try it out. I figured 15 knots, even though it was directly onshore, was manageable. I have a Flysurfer 9.3m Warrior. Apart from the on-shore aspect, it should have been fine. I’ve not had much success in surf and reasoned that this was a great chance to get my skills up. I’ve about 7 month’s solid experience.

It was light conditions, and I was struggling to get going and get past the broken surf. I skated back and forth parallel to the beach trying to get an edge and get past the waves. I finally got the puff I needed, heading to the left and got through the first wave, then the second but the third swamped me. While I was under water I turned my kite around to head back to the right. I was a bit worried the wave had carried me back to shore but there was no problem, as I quite enjoy skimming along close to the shoreline and I could edge again to get another run out. If I ran out of water I could just bail and land on the beach, which I’ve done a many times without incident.

To my surprise, instead of pulling me up as normal, the kite must have caught a gust and lifted me straight up. I’ve never been so high. I can’t really judge height but to me it seemed like I was about 20 feet above the beach, the water had gone and I was looking down at wet compacted beach sand. I have had a couple of hard landings before and knew this was going to seriously injure me. If I was more experienced I may have had more control of my decent. I didn’t, and instead of landing on my feet my kite looped and dived head first onto the beach. I followed the kite, and to my horror went from vertical to horizontal to inverted, hitting the wet beach head first. I felt my head hit, then my neck crushed as my body pushed in, then my body hit the beach. The Gath helmet was a godsend and cushioned the impact on my head so I wasn’t knocked out. My body felt like it had been hit by a truck. I could barely breath or move but had the sense to reached for the quick release and pulled it. Thankfully the kite was already nose down on the beach and not flying.

The guy’s I had launched with 30 minutes earlier were over 500m away and hadn’t seen me. There was nobody else in sight. I lay there for 10 minutes in agony and finally saw a single figure walking towards me. At last I knew help was at hand. I was lying like a rag doll with the waves washing around me. Then when he reached me he just kept walking straight past. I groaned as loudly as I could. He said later that he had just thought I was having a rest. <Bizarre. Thanks Ashley>.

With help and time I managed to stand and we packed away the kite and he got me back to my car left. I was hurting bad but assumed I would be alright. I drove off and on the way home reluctantly decided to divert to Royal Perth Hospital Emergency and find a doctor for a bit of quick advice. I didn’t think there was anything seriously wrong with me, but they kept sending me for more X-Ray’s, CT scan, and then an MRI scan. At midnight the Orthopedic surgeon came in and told me in no uncertain terms that I had broken my neck and how lucky I was to even be alive, let alone not paralyzed. I couldn’t believe it. They cut my cloths off me, put my head in sand bags, and it’s been a shocking last 4 days unable to move and looking at the ceiling. But as an update, today I got my prognosis. I’ve got extensive soft tissue damage between my vertebrae from C3,C4, C5, C6 and have fractured T1 and T2. But I’ve got no nerve damage and within 12 months, I’ll have made a 100% recovery. How lucky can one be?

So until then my new interest will be photographing kitesurfing and being an advocate for safe kiting. Nothing qualifies one for that more than experience and I think I’ve earned the right to speak on that point now. I’m very much an advocate for the sport of kitesurfing, and can’t wait to get out there again, but it won’t be anywhere with an onshore breeze, or on a secluded beach, or where there the conditions are in any way questionable. I think on Saturday I was so lucky.

If anyone has any questions I’d be happy to answer them. I just hope that everyone can read this and may learn something they can apply to make kiting safer.

Regards
Graeme Speak [email protected]

Hi graeme...also glad to hear you are on the mend. Takes courage to come back and relay your lucky escape for the benefit of others. Bet you are happy you wore a lid...was that the difference between a full recovery and tragedy?
mike

HOLY S**T Graeme !
Glad to hear you were so ??? lucky ????
Must have been a nightmare fews seconds.
Hope the up-side of the story is enough to keep your spirits up through the recovery time.
Where are you & for how long ?
(dare I say it) Chin Up
Cheers from me anyhow & hands off the nurses.


? 4 strings ?

Well I've been feeling as desperate as most to get out. I headed down to Cott yesterday (Wednesday) arvo at 2:30pm thinking I'd have a nice few hours in the NWly with everyone else who was bound to get off work and get a session in. There was nobody there. Nobody was there even at 3:30pm. Don't ask the number of times I was about to get out of the car and set up anyway, do a self launch and go by myself. However the rain kept coming and the dark cloudes kept rolling in. I think if it weren't for the proximity of the Duchies rock wall at the 'new' Cott launch spot in a NWly I might have actually thrown caution to the wind, attempted the self launch, and gone out. I eventually drove home disappointed, despondent, in fact in a foul mood having been cheated of my session. Reading this thread now re-enforces I made the right choice. Thank you Graeme for reminding me. Its just scary to think how close I came to ignoring all the golden safety rules...
Jess

It seems a pity that it takes an experience like this to teach a guy not to kite in onshore gusty conditions. I have seen too many people, especially in the river, kiting in gusty squally 30knt plus ONSHORE conditions. Even with a small kite you can still get lofted, as dale said. Before you go out, look downwind of the launch spot, and ASSUME that you are going to hit everything you see within 100-200m. If its only water, then you're OK.

Remember missing one session because it's onshore is better than missing a year, or the rest of your life, with an injury.

L

It'll be summer again before we know it and we'll hardly need to worry about this stuff!

I was in exactly the same position 2 years ago-i.e. in a hospital bed following a serious loft at Mullaloo. I was extremely lucky to have escaped with only a broken hip and a leg full of metal. This doesnt only happen to beginners- I had already been an addicted kiteboarder for almost 2 yrs when I had the accident. The only fortunate thing about these frontal accidents is that they happen in winter and IF you survive them, you will usually be out of action for the worst part of the kiting year. Winter!.

I have not given up kiting in winter, in fact, I must have left Mullalloo just before Graeme arrived. RayQ and I had a good sail, but it then got very strong and gusty and we packed up. Mark Steele also injured himself,on the same day and has a huge scalp laceration which required plenty of sutures.

Bottom line is take heaps of care and as JEss said, if it dont feel right, give it a miss.

Also , ive been quite concerned at some kiteboarders promoting frontal , onshore sailing as the cool thing to do, on this very forum .This is grossly irresponsible.

There WILL be more serious injuries this winter, hopefully not another fatality. Make sure you are not one of them.

Graeme . Hope you get out of hospital soon and recover quickly.

Louis

Good luck mate, and wish you a full recovery!

2 points need to be made here.
Firstly, in gusty / squally conditions you have to select your kite for the upper end. I sailed Cott today with my RRD 5.9, had a great sail on head high waves. Sure there were a few holes in the wind, but when as promissed it hit 30kn I was in control.

Secondly, and appologies to Ian Young, powerful foils are very dangerous. I have flown several, then changed to 4 liners, and was thinking of getting another mainly for the aesthetics....its a beautiful thing. BUT, then I watched in awe as a mate of mine was SUCKED up 20 feet into the air by his 9m warrior in a wind that momentarily increased form 12 to 18kn. No joking, it was not an extreme wind, and second by second he just went higher and higher over the sand, heading for the dunes. By shear luck when he came down (hard) he had no more than bruising. He sold the kite next week and bought an inflatable.

So to push my point, I think modern foils are totally unsuitable unless you are an expert. Combining my 2 points, don't choose a foil on a day that squalls are likely.

Graeme,
it's a small world, I heard about your accident on Sunday from my cousin who knows your brother and heard that you will live to kite another day. Glad you are Ok.

I went to the river with Neil on Sunday 3pm for a kite with a choice of a 9m or 14m. Neil put the 9m with a big board and was only just going. A couple of other guys had 12m with big boards. I was sitting on the sand watching everyone else out on the water and went to the car to get out the 14m. I hesitated and thought NOPE not worth the risk and sat on the beach and sulked.(sorry grown women kiters do this to)
Was it because I am mature(no comments please)a female, or 2yrs experience that made me make this careful decision? NO,NO, a near miss on the Easterlys a month ago at Burke Drive(near Pt. Walter). I had the 14m up and was fine but way overpowered in the gusts. Decided I wasn't having fun so started to come in. I was a good distance from the shore when again a gust overpowered me, lifted me up then got a double boost from another gust and was high in the air, I didn't come down and started floating towards shore. I was up there thinking, hmmm this is how people end up over trees & houses. When I realised I wasn't coming down I kicked the board off and reached for the safety. I missed it the first grab but then started to come down, so I decided that if I wasn't in control when I hit the water I would pull it then. Well I was in control, no more gusts, got my kite landed and thought I was very lucky. Neil saw this and thought he was going to be collecting my insurance policy....Not this time baby ha ha
Kiting is addictive, I love it, so it doesn't matter what age, experience, or sex, we all get over confident and the urge to get out on the water can effect our judgement. Better to miss out and kite another day.

Sue

IT REMINDED ME OF MY TOTAL KNEE RECONSTRUCTION AND THE ASSOCIATED FRUSTRATION, OF BEING LAYED UP.LOOK AFTER IT, COME BACK STRONGER AND FITTER.quote PANTERA [TIME WILL HEAL]

jeez dennis sorry to hear that get back on the bike asap
graeme good luck with the recovery
had similar incident 18/12 ago ended up in rph concussion and rogered ac joint
as with any accident look at the factors and learn
for me strong wind, small kite,too long bar, absolutely no lee down wind, not usual launch spot, OVERCONFIDENT
good kick in the arse for me = respect the conditions
anyway for 12+ months i was nervous lauching anywhere, just looking in the trees and seeing the strength brought back a few jitters
now very careful, double check everything only kite with safety in mind
still f***-ups happen!! but take out the risks as much as possible and the consequences aren't as severe
imo check seabreeze graphs for the nw'ers if the graphs look like saw toothed flag it

Thanks everyone for you words of encouragement. It was great to get home, get on line, and read each of them. My natural inclination was to just keep it quite to myself and save the embarrasement, but I'm glad you've all agreed that its better to share the experience.

I spent most of my week on my back, head and neck in sandbags. It was an agonising endurance test and I'm lucky that it was only as long as it was. I'm not allowed to move my head or neck at all for several months, so they've got a special brace (a SOMI brace which feels like a brace n bit) which I have to wear. It makes me look like one of my son's action toys. They told me on Thursday that once I learned to put it on, and take it off safely by myself, then they would feel confident about releasing me. I had nothing else to do so spent the day practicing, first with the bed mirror, then without, then doing time trials. Hahaha. When the surgeons came back I was doing it like clock work: click, click, snap, lock, done in 3 minutes 15 seconds. I left them with no choice but to let me go home. Its going to be a bit slow around here though for the next few months. I'll even have to put the breakdancing on hold for a bit too.

So, reflecting on my experiences and the other comments offered, I wanted to put offer a few more of my own insights on the issue of safety.

* By far the largest risk comes from inexperienced kiters who, even after some training, do not have enough background to really decern what the safety level of conditions are, or the risks they are about to take.
* Generally speaking most experienced kiters are probably confident enough to handle more dangerous situations. Unfortunately its the inexperienced and enthusastic who follow the examples set by others and are not able to make the distinction of whats safe and what is dangerous for them. Experienced kiters will be followed by the less experienced as they are setting an example. Its similar to children knowing the road rules but not being experienced enough to apply them to themselves and making errors.
* As an example of this, after 6 months of kiting at Pelican Point I was astonished to learn at the WAKSA meeting it was a more advanced location and not safe for beginners. It had occured to me many times that the breeze was almost directly onshore and this was what we were told not to kite in, but everyone was doing it anyhow so I presumed it was safe enough. I was just following everyone else. It just goes to show the power of example and how it can override common sense.

The question I want to pose is, what can we do to ensure that less experienced kiters are better able to assess the conditions against their ability. Can we do this emperically, without any ambiguity? How do we stop people going out in conditions which might exceed their ability? Should we have ratings for individuals, and for locations, and for conditions.

Graeme

Is this just not ****, and an excuse to get plastered on any excuse?
PTSD?? come on , only yanks come down with that. Everyone else just gets the ****s from now and then....
big deal, get over it.

Dear Graeme,

I was serious with my response of concern about you, but may have illicited the responses from those 2 as I usually play the absolute fool on the ws forum.

However, I mentioned PTSD as I know what I'm talking about, I have worked with Vietnam Veterans for over 10 years, most of them have a complex and chronic PTSD which despite all the treatment they get they never recover from. It is possible to get PTSD from a one off traumatic event, and if treated immediately recovery will occur in between 4 to 16 weeks. It is a serious disorder and can afflict anyone who experiences a trauma and the way you described your accident says to me it is still very vivid in your memory, and possibly places you at risk? However, not everyone that experiences a trauma will go on to get PTSD it depends on a number of resiliency and vulnerability factors.

The scpeticism and derogatory remalks about PTSD is the very thing that stopped Vietnam Veterans talking about what was happening to them. Most of them suffered in silence for decades, and only got treatment 30 years after the event, which is probably too late for most of them. It is nothing to be ashamed about, it is what happens to humans, who experience trauma.

My statements were made in a context of good will and serious concern about your health, and I hope they are taken that way.

Hardie SoftBoy

Thanks Hardie for your advice. I've read about this before. I think I must have replayed the experience in my mind time and time again as I lay on my back the first night in the bed. I don't think I'm traumatised by this, but now and again I think I was sooo bloody lucky that I can't believe how close it was. I guess I'm just looking forward to doing it better next time I get out, but I'll not be entertaining any on-shore breeze anymore.
Thanks for the advise.
Graeme

Hardmad We all stuff upkite surfing is for busting sick tricks just look at moto cross there crazzy[}:)]
May be you should do something u can handle golf,chess,windsurfing,softball etc....

quote:

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Originally posted by flake
May be you should do something u can handle golf,chess, ...(wait 4 it)... windsurfing.... etc

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LUV IT - WOT A LAFF - RECKON THAT 1 HAS 2 TAKE THE FLAKE
and hey evry1 - dont stress - its just 1 hell of a 1 liner ....
- nobodys seriously nokin the good intentions of the PTSD warnin'
(or the dexterity of poledancers [}:)] snigger snigger)

"lighten up - its a great way 2 fly higher" T.S. Elliot

MOCK ON