The Day I nearly Drowned In Paradise Part 1
I was at the Silversands Hotel in Barbados, with my estranged wife and her son for some family time together. It was Sunday the 1st of February 2009 at approximately 12.00pm when I danced with death and nearly drowned in paradise.
Silversands is not too far from where the Atlantic Ocean, meets the Caribbean Sea and as a result of this, the waves can be little bit choppy at times. However we had been there countless times in the past without any problems. I later found out numerous people have either drowned or been very close to drowning on this stretch of water in the past.
It was your typical beautiful day in the Caribbean, the skies were blue, the sun was shining bright and I was feeling good. After about an hour of sun bathing the boy was getting a wee bit bored and wanted to head into the sea to play around.
We were fooling around in the water diving into the waves, which were fairly tame compared to what we were used too. The next thing that I can remember is diving into a wave, which was about 5 feet from the shore. I don’t know how long we had been under the water for, but when we came up we were about 50 feet from the shore.
I can vaguely remember surfacing and being in a bit of daze and disorientated. I couldn’t understand why the beach had suddenly become so tiny. I was pretty cool and relaxed at this point, I didn’t think I was in any danger. I just thought I would swim back to shore no problem.
The next thing I hear is the boy screaming and shouting for help. He was about 20 feet to the side of me. At this point I was still trying to get my breath back and my head clear. I then tried to swim towards him, but the underwater currents wouldn’t let me move. I was struggling big time to even stay afloat let alone move.
I shouted at him, “swim swim, swim like crazy, don’t give up”. At this point I really started to feel that we were in extreme danger of drowning. I could see the fear in his face, and I was struggling to stay afloat let alone get to him.
My survival instincts kicked in and I shouted as loud as I could, as well as waving my arms in the air like crazy. Unfortunately there was no one on the beach, everyone was on the hotel grounds. At this stage I was in a state of shock, I couldn’t believe what had happened. One minute we are having a laugh and the next we are about to drown. I thought this cant really be happening.
My wife miraculously heard our shouts and came to the shore to investigate, she initially thought we were just fooling around. By this time I was dazed and really struggling to stay afloat. I kept thinking to myself, is this it, I couldn’t hear or see the boy now. I feared he had drowned and I thought to myself there is no way in the world that I’m even going to try to come ashore without him. I thought it was truly over at this time.
Just when I was thinking about how his mum and family would feel about losing the boy. I couldn’t believe it when about 20 feet in front of me, I watched someone grab the boy and throw him to another rescuer. I later found out that the boy had been lucky and a big wave took him towards shore.
I can remember my last thoughts as clear as day, I felt happy and relieved that the boy had been rescued, and that they were too far away to reach me in time. I felt no fear or pain, I then blacked out and went under the water.
The next thing I felt was water splashing on my feet and a blinding light shining in my eyes. I wasn’t sure if had drowned or not, was I in heaven or hell, then when I heard a Germans voice, “get out the way, I’m a doctor”. I feared the worst and thought I was truly in hell.
I felt like total crap, the doctor took my pulse, which he said was fine, he asked me about my heart rate, which strangely felt normal. My rescuer and the Doctor helped me to a beach chair in the shade. I then spent the next hour throwing up half the sea. It then took me a good couple of hours before I felt like I wasn’t walking on air and I could see properly again.
I thankfully I got the chance to thank my rescuer for saving my life, he was a young local guy that was very fit and an amazing swimmer. If fate hadn’t transpired to have this guy there, I wouldn’t be around today, that is the bottom line.
I was drowning and if he never arrived when he did, I would have quite simply drowned. There were two other guys who came to our aid, but the guy that was the main rescuer was seemingly like something out of Baywatch he moved like a bullet and swam like a fish to save us.
Part 2 of “The Day I nearly Drowned In Paradise”
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