In August 2023, word broke that a surf camp transport boat had gone missing near the Banyak Islands in Indonesia. Four visiting Australian tourists and three Indonesian staff were lost at sea. Over the next 48 hours, a harrowing tale of survival, relief, and sorrow unfolded where, after floating for nearly two days, the four Australians and two of the Indonesians were rescued. Sadly, one of the Indonesians, Fifan Satria, was never found.
Despite all the international media attention that the accident drew, all the details of what unfolded hadn’t been fully disclosed in a public medium – until now.
Elliot Foote, one of the survivors who was celebrating his 30th birthday on the trip to Indonesia, went on the podcast On The Sauce to recount the story from his point of view. In the two-part podcast (only part one had been released as of publication), Foote sets the scene of how they found themselves in a capsized boat under the pitch-black sky of the open ocean. He then recounts the subsequent series of survival decisions that eventually saw them paddling their surfboards for hours on end in search of land.
“I’ve told this story in person probably a hundred times now,” Foote says on the podcast. “It’s quite an adrenaline rush still for me to tell the story because I tap back into the feelings, the emotions, all the energy of the whole scenario. But spreading it out more (globally), to the extended crew that I don’t get to see all the time…it’s a good (story) for sure. It’s a doozy.”
It’s a story of survival that will strike a chord with anyone, but particularly with surfers who have traveled to the remote islands of the Indonesia archipelago. I was hooked from start to end and am looking forward to part two.
