Baron Spafford

Meeting my wife of 36 years on Maui in July 1968 and surfing Honolua w/ 3 people out…

    In 1980 I was over on the North Shore shooting Mark Angell’s wedding.  We had been surfing small waves all day, but in the afternoon it started to pick up.  Mark lives right there at Sunset, and I was checking it with Tiger Espere.  He said, “You’re out there!” so I paddled out and got a few pretty good waves.  It wasn’t very crowded.  I remember I picked up a pretty good-sized wave, and as I was going through into the inside reef it started to bend in on me.  I think I decided to straighten out - the whole wave just pitched out over me and I went down.  Thinking back on it I guess my cord was too short or something because I was held down and just couldn’t come up.  I remember feeling so helpless—completely helpless—as if, despite all of my years of surfing and everything I knew, the situation was completely out of my hands.  I eventually started to black out and experience “the corridor” effect.  It was a very claustrophobic feeling, spinning forward through this tunnel towards a black void.  But I knew that the black void was my death—I didn’t see Jesus waiting for me with outstretched arms (and I believe in Jesus Christ).  It was a terrible feeling.

    Then I hit the void, and technically died.  I took in water and became totally asphyxiated.  I was gone…

    On the surface, an off-duty lifeguard happened to be paddling out, and he saw the nose of my board sticking up (“tombstoning”).  With no oxygen in my lungs, I was at total neutral buoyancy, drifting around at the end of my leash while my board stuck up in the air.  He stroked over and hauled me up off the bottom (“like hauling up a big tuna,” he said later).  He got me into the beach, where there [miraculously] just happened to be an off-duty nurse laying out.  They began CPR immediately.  The next thing I remember, I could hear distant voices, like I was listening from the bottom of a well.  I began pleading, “Bring me back, bring me back!”  although I don’t think they could hear me.  In fact, it’s funny, but I never even found out either of their names.  They got a pulse, though, and I was taken to Kahuku Hospital, and later transferred to Queens Hospital in Honolulu.  I was in intensive care for several days, as my lungs wouldn’t work voluntary.  They said I’d be in there for two weeks, but about three days later I was released, and about seven days after the accident I paddled back out at Sunset.  I had to get back up on the horse right away, or else I knew I might not ever paddle out again.  I rode a couple of waves and then went in, but I have never surfed there since.  In fact, every time I drive past Sunset now I get a real eerie feeling.  It really took the wind out of my sails, as far as big-wave riding goes…