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For you Crell cheers mate 

Hello everyone , while the trihull boat story from yesterday is still fresh in your mind , I’ll give you all my account of another incident that occurred with me on the vessel. 

I was 16 years old , when the school year ended for me at De La Salle College in Malvern and I returned home. 

My dad had told me that with my leaving school it would be a requirement for me to get a job but he also forbade me to pursue my job of my dreams and to be a professional fisherman at San Remo as he said the industry wouldn’t actually last much longer . 

So panel beating was my next job choise and I went to the panel shops in town looking for an apprenticeship and to see Wally Purvis a local builder also looking for a job. 

Wally told me that if Mick didn’t give me a job I could start there straight after the Christmas break . 

I went to lots of places and by the end of the day I had three apprenticeships and four job offers to choose from. 

So I had also invited a school mate down for a week to stay as he had never been in the country before.

I had planned some pretty good stuff for him and me to do and the first was a diving trip out on the boat . He arrived on the Friday night and Saturday was the planned dive trip. 

Back in the day even if you weren’t down diving underwater you could go fishing while you wait your turn in the exhaust noise of the running hookah . 

I had the luxury of abalone and cray fish legs for bait , and when you shucked the abb overboard the fish especially big sweep would come in for a feed. 

So my mate James was in for a real treat 

Dad would let me dive ,but not James , as he had made me months earlier study the scuba dive manual from front to back at home and then I had to pass his rigorous oral exam for the privilege. 

So we dived with a hooka unit a twin operator , it’s basically a compressor  hooked up to a stationary petrol engine and special oil specific and water filtration system making it produce breathable air all in a compact frame. 

This when coupled to a special bright yellow air hose and that with a built in nylon insert so you can’t kink it by accident and cut off your air supply. 

At the end of the hose was a stainless steel clip to attach to your belt as your pulling point . And a fitting for your regulator connection. 

Then finally you have a regulator mouth piece to fit to the hose that has a purge button on the front of it to empty it and to expel air from . 

You can fill your catch bag with air in one end and send it skywards from the bottom to the surface or to your boat . Or you can simply purge any water out of your mask while you are underwater . 

So to say Saturday morning was perfect and next to no wind just a slight Northerly offshore so it was fantastic diving weather and it would be calm seas .

We get all our gear for the day organised and packed and I there  and so was was Grant our five buddy for the day going out with us ,also that’s not his real name as my sister says I shouldn’t use people’ s real names in my stories but it sort of spoils it . 

I have had lots of personal feed back from family’s that are in my stories  and the all absolutely loved  it so for those ones it will remain the same and I’ll right more stories about them about them from now on I guess .

We hit Cape Patterson bay beach to the beach launch ramp to put in the boat , 

now beach launches are a lot different than a ramp

launch, and it depends on the tide and sand just how you go about it and because waves generally break on shore there you disconnect your trailer and  tie a rope on the gooseneck and push it manually into the water. 

Once your boat floats off the trailer then you hook up the other end of the rope to your vehicle’s tow bar and then tow it out of the water by the rope, then either reattach it to your vehicle or leave it on the beach for retrieve later . 

It was perfectly flat as we left Brownies Bay and we weaved our way out to open waters though the rock pool shelf  and avoiding the suck up rock that’s hiding in the bay , 

then we are in open waters and soon enough we are already at at the back of no 1 surf beach and our destination was around the next point and the run down to Harners Haven to chase the prize , being Crayfish , 

There is a massive offshore dangerous reef we have to negate called the Bommie  or short for Bombora that was probably 400 metres long and usually to pass it you would be roughly at least a km out further to sea to safely pass it by as it’s natorious  for big swell , 

so only a handful of local legends ever dared to surf it , the oldest was Norm Legg affectionately known as cave man he was surfing it in his eighties and a few of the local life savers, and my my mate ,Rat who had no fear of it whatsoever, we would  both walk out sometimes on the rock platform with my dog Bear and he would have his board tucked under his arm ,he would pick his moment to launch and then yell as he camakazied it and jumped into the oblivion on his board , he was born and bread there at Cape  and he knew it like the back of his hand . 

Tragically he died a long time ago but his photo is proudly still up on my wall. 

So now you all have an idea of the Bommie , let’s continue on , 

dad was driving the boat but I wish in hindsight it was me , 

Because it was so calm he did a really close parallel run to the reef and my estimation would be only twenty ft off the reef , as I could see it jutting out when the small swell surged back  and it was that clear you could see the rock in under the water . 

I felt uneasy and in my mind I thought we were miles too bloody close . 

James and I were at the front section  of the boat and dad and Grant were both down the back . 

We were setting a fair pace as I looked out to see and my eyes popped out of my head as there was a twenty foot rogue wave Fifty meters out to see with the top metre already broken and white water crashing down its face.

I screamed at dad and pointed at the wave and he yelled out to everyone to hang on and he spun the boat to face it and gave her full throttle . 

As we hit the wave at full noise when we burst out of the top my hand slipp from the rail and just like the bounce on a trampoline I got catapulted to be six feet above the boat and we were still all going up. 

We hung  in  the air for a second probably thirty ft in the air before falling back down hard to the ocean .

I was still above the boat and I was falling with my right forearm going to hit the bow rail , and in a split second out of instinct I changed arms and I sacrificed my left arm instead and braced myself , and the full force of my fall landed with my wrist across the bow  rail , it bent down right to the deck I hit it that hard ,

I was in instantly excruciating pain and I looked at my arm to see the damage , it was sickening my wrist had moved upwards three inches and with a bone end sticking out of my forearm and bleeding . 

I had never in my life said the word Fuck in front of my dad but I screamed it over and over again until I could gain some sort of composure. 

Lucky for me it was only one freak wave and not a set of them and it was strangely and erially instantly back to glass , 

I sat on the hooker hoses for the trip home holding my broken arm wondering if it were fixable or was I stuck with it ? and even though  it was now calm 

I was feeling every single bump , but I did ok managing the pain level and by the time we hit the shore I had the pain mostly under control in my mind , but I made the big mistake of jumping off the deck down  onto the hard sand , that was a big jolt , and it sent the pin into overdrive for a second it went right up my arm , 

lucky for me the Wonthaggi Royal Lifesaving Club was on patrol , I’m actually a member there so I spoke to dad and told him he might as well go back out diving as there’s nothing he could do for me .

Unbeknownst to me he went to the cape top shop and he rang mum and told her that he had broken my arm and didn’t explain it poor mum thought that he and I must have had a punch up  she didn’t find out the truth out till later on that evening.

So it was an air splint and a ride in the ambulance , Peter the driver let me sit in the front with him instead of me laying down in the back , the air splint I had on stuck out a bit and I knocked it hard on the door opening getting in the Ambulance and I almost fainted , and I had , relieved absolutely no pain relief at all up to that stage . 

So next thing I’m then admitted into the Wonthaggi hospital and an X-ray was quickly taken and I waited in the ward , so then the surgeons visited me it was 

Dr Pepper , and Dr John Crellin and I think that’s he was a mister by then .

Dr Pepper was pretty serious about everything but Crell just smiled at me as he always enjoyed seeing me . 

Obviously they had to knock me out and I asked how they would fix it and they replied don’t worry Curly a little bit of traction will be in order. 

In my mind I could then picture my operation and I could see them with one of their foot deep in my shoulder and then both pulling hard as one bone on the forearm was bent like into an s shape but not broken so strain it they did . 

When I woke up with a sore shoulder knew I was right and when Dr Pepper did the rounds , of course  I asked him how the operation went and he sternly told me it would be about two degrees out of wack . 

I wasn’t that pleased  with the news , but in the end when the cast finally came off my arm was a bit skinny but absolutely perfect. 

Mum forgave dad on hearing the full story but

poor  James didn’t get much of a country week holiday , maybe I’ll invite him back soon , 

So the moral of the story is never take the risk of cutting in close to reefs even on flat conditions days as a rogue wave could just come along too  and  maybe break you .

Hmm I wrecked  my left arm again so badly a bit later on in another exciting story . 

Cheers xxx

Curlyg