It was one of the first spring swells on Oahu’s south shore, with small waves breaking crisp over the reef, and I got careless, taking off too late on a snappy little peak that jacked up at low tide. I got pitched over. My board followed and nailed me in the ear with a loud, bone-shuddering crack.
Disoriented, I climbed back on my board and gently felt my head and ear. I checked my hand.
There wasn’t any blood, so I figured I’d keep surfing. I paddled back out into the lineup.
My ear burned.
At such times, one regrets breaking a basic rule: Never surf alone. There was a crowd, but no one I felt comfortable asking to take a look at my ear.
Captain Cal, who had a practiced eye for assessing injuries after 40 years at sea, was back east for his wife Penelope’s high school reunion.
I felt around again. No lump. No blood. Then suddenly, as if a tap had been turned on, I felt the familiar liquid warmth trickling down my ear, and sure enough, my hand came away bright red.
It had rained heavily overnight. That meant the ocean was tainted with runoff from storm drains, streams and the Ala Wai Canal, laced with bacteria I didn’t want in my cut.
At least I caught a nice, long wave in, the endorphins of a good ride washing my cares away — temporarily.
Stitches: The word falls like a death knell upon a surfer’s ears, in my case the ear that was gashed by the nose of my board and needed three stitches, according to the doctor at the urgent-care clinic.
Because of the risk of infection, stitches keep you out of the water for at least a week.
“Couldn’t you just put on a butterfly bandage?” I asked the doctor.
She shook her head. “The wound is deep in places. It’s gaping.”
I felt slightly sick. Needle-phobic since childhood, I’ve never had my ears pierced. Now my own surfboard had done it.
“At least it didn’t stick deep in your muscle, like the surfer who came in earlier,” said the doctor’s assistant. He’d been skegged in the bicep while duck-diving through a cleanup set.
His accident and mine were a reminder of the many injuries that are self-inflicted by a surfer’s own board. Just a few examples:
Professor Pauline has had her nose broken twice by her potato-chip boards hitting her in the face.
The Captain skegged himself in the shin going over the falls on a steep wave. He came up pale.
“I’m goin’ in,” he said. “Penelope’s home, she’ll take me to the ER.”
He left a splashy red blood trail leading from the shore all the way to his house.
Cal later recounted how, as he half-ran, half-limped, up the sidewalk with blood spurting from his wound, he met another Suis regular — a medical doctor — jogging shoreward with his board.
“Hey, Doc! I need a tourniquet,” Cal said.
“All he said was, ‘Are the waves good?’ and he ran right past me,” Cal said, shaking his head.
Ten years ago, surfing a hollow beach break in France, I struck my shin with my rail and it left a dent that’s still there. There was a cut, and little white worms were oozing out.
“Qu’est-ce que c’est (What’s that)?” I asked the lifeguard, fearing they were fragments of bone.
“C’est la graisse (It is the fat),” he said.
Most of the time, we get lucky. When my brother Ethan smiles you can see a deep dimple in his cheek, placed there by the skeg of his board on a big day. It gives him a dashing mien and reminds me of his close call.
After a week, the doctor took my stitches out and said I could go surfing immediately.
But when I grabbed my board I noticed a crack along the rail that mirrored the scar in my ear.
“What board is that?” the Captain asked me as I paddled into the lineup.
“My backup board.”
“Where’s the other one?”
“I’m drying it out. It got dinged when it hit my head.”
The Captain’s blue eyes widened.
“You’ve got a hard head,” he said, with an approving nod.
“In the Lineup” features Hawaii’s oceangoers and their regular hangouts, from the beach to the deep blue sea. Reach Mindy Pennybacker at mpennybacker@staradvertiser.com or call 529-4772.
