The surfers were rescued and the still-missing crew member. A GoFundMe campaign has been set up to aid the family of missing crew member, Fifan Satria.
Last month saw the remarkable rescue of four Australian surfers who had been lost at sea for 36 hours. Elliot Foote, his girlfriend Steph Weisse and friends Will Teagle and Jordan Short had been travelling from Nias to the Banyak Islands to celebrate Foote’s 30th birthday. Their small wooden boat capsized in a storm, but the surfers managed to keep their surfboards and huddle together until a search party located them. Sadly, an Indonesian crew member Fifan Marongo is still missing, presumed dead.
Despite the 36 hours stranded at sea, the quartet were in good health and decided to continue the surf trip. And yet their incident wasn’t an isolated case. Over the years, surfers have survived some incredible ordeals. Here are four examples of surfers who survived against the odds.
Mr. Archibald, in a much better place as he’s rescued. Photo: Courtesy The Barrenjoey
Brett Archibald, 28 hours, Mentawai Straits
The benchmark for survival has to be Brett Archibald, 50, who spent 28 hours lost at sea in the Mentawais with nothing but a pair of boardshorts for protection. Archibald, suffering from nausea, had fallen overboard at 2 a.m. in rough seas on the initial crossing from the mainland to the Islands.
“I just watched the lights of the boat disappear,” he said later. “I screamed with everything I had in my lungs, but I realized very quickly that they were never going to hear me.”
The former tank commander in the South African defense force spent the next day being stung by jellyfish, circled by sharks and, at his lowest point, having seagulls take chunks of skin off the bridge of his nose. At one stage with hypothermia, dehydration, sunburn and exhaustion taking its toll, he gave up and tried to sink, only for his survival instincts to kick in. Largely through the search efforts of Tony “Doris” Etherington, the experienced captain of the surf charter boat The Barrenjoey, Archibald was found alive after 28 hours.
In a final twist to the tale, after his rescue, Archibald decided to finish the rest of his boat trip. “I talked about it with my wife and she encouraged me to stay on,” he said. “I needed time to process the enormity of what had happened.” Archibald would later write a book chronicling his ordeal: Alone: Lost Overboard in the Indian Ocean.
Matthew Bryce, Irish Sea, 32 hours
After two days and a night at sea, Matthew Bryce watched his second sunset and thought he was going to die.
That was a logical conclusion. The 23-year-old had driven to Westport in the Kintyre Peninsula, on the west coast of Scotland, and went for a surf at 11 a.m. on a Sunday. However, wind and strong currents had swept him out to sea, and unable to paddle back to shore, he headed for a shipping lane after seeing fishing vessels in the distance.
He spent the next 32 hours in the 50°F Irish Sea and had given up hope. “I knew I wasn’t going to make another night, so I was watching the sunset,” he told the BBC. “Then a helicopter flew over me.”
The helicopter pilot Duncan Tripp told the BBC that they thought initially Bryce was a marker buoy. “We came round gain only because that buoy shouldn’t have been in that area,” Tripp said. “And we found a bloke sitting on a surfboard.” Bryce was discovered 13 miles from shore. Unlike the four Australians and Archibald mentioned above, Bryce said that he would never surf again after the ordeal.
Toru, 16 hours, Bulli, Australia
In 2019, a visiting Japanese surfer was picked up by a cargo ship, having spent 16 hours alone on his surfboard some three-and-a-half miles off the coast of Sandon Point, 40 miles south of Sydney. In a somewhat strange twist, Toru (as he’s known) had paddled out at night before getting caught in a current that pushed him out to sea.
He said he wanted to see the moon set and the sun rise and went on “the long paddle” as he put it, on purpose. “Scary is a very important feeling … I like to fight against scary, fight against the enemy inside,” he told ABC. “
Toru was fortunate that his bright yellow board was spotted by crew members of the MSC Damla, who pulled him on board and got police to send another boat to take him back to shore. No active search was being conducted for Toru at the time, as no one had reported him missing.
Toru would later call the 16 hours at sea, “a beautiful experience on the water,” though he did vow to stick to daytime surfing in the future.
Jan Lisewski, having survived to tell his tale. Photo: Courtesy JL
Jan Lisewski, Red Sea, 40 Hours
Back in 2012, Jan Lisewski attempted to be the first to kite surf across the Red Sea. However, when the wind stopped, and his kite deflated, the 42-year-old Pole was forced to spend 40 hours at sea. Lisewski had travelled 80 of the 124-mile journey from the Egyptian town of El Gouna to Duba in Saudi Arabia when he was becalmed and sent an SOS signal.
On the plus side for Lisewski, the Red Sea is one of the warmest bodies of water on Earth. He also had energy drinks, some water and two energy bars as part of his crossing attempt.
On the downside, he was at one stage surrounded by 18-foot-long bull sharks and relied on a knife he had on hand to keep him safe. “I was stabbing them in the eyes, the nose and gills,” Lisewski told Polish state news agency PAP afterwards. Nearly 40 hours after placing his first SOS signal, Lisewski was finally located and rescued by the Saudi Arabian Coast Guard.
