Woman vs Laser - The Take Down
Published 21:05 on 28 Jul 2024
Living and working on an island in the Mediterranean we don't experience much tidal influence. Most wave days are caused by a meteorological system called the Meltemi, which has been translated to mean several things; periodic winds, bad weather, and annual winds. The Meltemi effect is caused by pressure differences over Northern Europe in particular the Black Sea having a large high pressure system, and a large low pressure system above south east Asia. This then results in strong winds occupying the northeast Mediterranean, in particular the Aegean. On the island of Lesvos, the prevailing direction of these winds is offshore, so chop is limited making this resort perfect for windsurfing, but the Meltemi is the cause of some rough conditions out to sea. But it's not the only cause. We get a fair amount of seemingly unexplained swell, caused by ships and maritime traffic miles out to sea in the busy shipping lane connecting the Greek Islands and providing a key route to Turkey, this swell can travel quite far up the beach sometimes and many a flip-flop has fallen victim to it.
The Meltemi, combined with an unusual cross-on wind direction coming from the southeast created some quite strange conditions on this particular June day. Friday 14th of June to be exact. This particular day there wasn't a great deal of wind, but there was a bit of swell first thing in the morning. This isn't normal but we didn't think anything of it, at the time. The swell built up throughout the morning, before suddenly dying off at around 11:30am. Relief! Or so we thought, no more worries about broadsiding boats, and no more disgruntled guests having to swim back to shore due to the large breaking waves.
Turns out this was the calm before the storm! Just as half of the team headed off on their lunch break the swell picked up again. The safety boat driver radioed in to inform the beach boss of the swell increasing out in the sailing area. And less than 5 minutes later the waves reaching the shore were huge! Easily a meter or two in height. When you were standing in the water and a wave came towards you, that was the only thing you could see a wall of water heading straight towards you.
Guests who were out on the water at this point were told to head in for their own safety, apart from the catamarans, it was decided they were perfectly fine out there. At this point we had a steady stream of boats heading into the shore, no problem as there were three of us on shore break so plenty of people to catch the boats, pull up the fusions and lift the lasers out of the water. When a boat was sailing towards you was when you started to realise quite how big these waves actually were! Stood just above waist depth, when a wave came towards you the hull of the boat and even the boom was completely obscured from view.
It was at this point the strict no swearing on the beach rule went out the window. These waves were huge! And one of our powerboats moored out in the powerboat lane got tossed into the air almost flipping itself over. So, the beach was promptly red flagged and closed. The first person back from lunch was our waterfront manager who had been sat in the beach bar enjoying some peace and quiet and a coffee, she saw the chaos unfolding and ran into the sea in her dry uniform to help us get the situation under control and get as many boats off the water as possible without any injuries. Three lasers then came into shore in quick succession. The first one was carried out of the shore break and straight onto its trolley no issues. The second and third lasers were being held in the shallows by myself and an instructor, waiting for enough manpower to lift them.
Out of nowhere comes a set of waves bigger than all the previous sets. The first in this set was huge and knocked me off my feet. The next was in such quick succession I couldn't regain my footing in time, so I got pushed under the water. And the third wave of the set, well that was where disaster or should I say laser struck. Boom! A laser straight to the head. I try and carry on getting these boats out of the water, but suddenly there are several people shouting to me to get out of the water. I stood up and made my way up the beach, when several guests approach me and tell me my head is bleeding. So I reached up to touch my head and felt a small amount of blood more alarmingly though was the egg that was developing on my head. So that was the end of my playing in the waves for that day. I was banished into the staff area icing my head, then sent to lunch.
When we all came back from lunch that was where the fun began for all the other staff, although there was a fair amount of hard work involved too. Meanwhile I had been told to keep icing my head and sit in the shade at the operations desk delivering the news to guests that the beach was closed. This did mean I got some good laughs at the expense of the other instructors though. The lasers that didn't make it out of the water before I got taken out by one, were tied up to the swimming and powerboat lanes, most of them had capsized although some were still upright. The capsized ones gave us a bit of a challenge though the masts and booms had fallen off, so someone had a bit of a freediving recovery mission. The lasers weren't the biggest problem to get out of the sea, it took double the pairs of hands but all the lasers were eventually recovered and sat safely back on their trolleys. The biggest problem was our Argos, these beasts of a boat are heavy and hard to get out of the water anyway the waves made it twenty times harder. Luckily management had called in reinforcements and a Mark Warner army of; childcare, fitness, cycling and tennis staff arrived. Luckily this meant there were enough people to pull the Argos up the beach, with the help of a very long bit of rope tied to the painter! The end of the day rolled round and everyone was exhausted, and I got sent home early and was driven home by the resort manager because of my head. When I was then told not to worry about being in work the following day. When I woke up the following day I felt awful so decided to just try and sleep it off. That was until it got to about 6pm and my vision had gone a bit funny. I let my manager know, and I was told I had to go to the medical centre. About 15 minutes later a taxi arrived to take me to the medical centre about 30 minutes away. That was fine, no drama or so I thought... that was until they instructed me to go to the only hospital on the island. Which is in Mytilene the island's capital, over an hour and a half away from where I live. I guess living in a fairly remote area of a Greek island has its downsides. The taxi ride to the hospital seemed to take an eternity, and on arrival to the hospital I was taken to what I assume was the Greek version of Accident and Emergency even though I had a referral from the medical centre. I remember sitting in the waiting room and taking it all in; the yellow coloured walls not quite the colour I would expect in a hospital. The ominous closed door into A&E past the desk with an intimidating security guard and of course the signs all in the Greek alphabet. |
After about 20 minutes of waiting, I got called and instructed to follow a nurse where I was then ushered to a bed and admitted pretty scary considering I had never been admitted to hospital before even in the UK. Shortly after, I was surrounded by nurses, all conversing about me in Greek. While they were talking about me, I was being poked and prodded to have a blood sample taken. I had no clue what was going on at this point, as I hadn't come across any English speakers. Just after this a nurse with red curly hair came up to me and put me on an IV - I'm still not even sure what that was for, she spoke a little English and told me it was for pain and I would shortly be going for a CT scan and for X-rays. The next bit was all a bit of a blur, I just remember getting shouted at by a nurse because I was asked to do something in Greek but didn't understand. Then I was taken on a magical mystery tour to the CT scanner, then straight to the X-ray room to do a chest X-ray. No one ever told me why any of this was happening, so this was pretty scary. I was eventually taken back to the hospital bed, and then put on another IV which they didn't tell me the purpose of. It was getting to about 10pm by then so I was wondering what would happen and when they would let me leave all I wanted was my bed. After about half an hour a nurse came up to me and took me off the IV. She unfortunately didn't speak English so I couldn't ask her how long until I could go home. Finally, the red headed nurse came back and gave me a gigantic brown envelope with loads of papers and the X-ray inside. She then told me everything was okay so I could leave, then told me to look at the papers in the envelope. I did that just before I left the hospital, on opening the envelope I found it was just pages and pages written in Greek so this wasn't much help to me, so I decided to take a picture and try trusty google translate. Luckily my Greek manager knew I was going to the hospital (he was the one who sent me to the clinic) so was expecting contact from me. Once I got back in my taxi to go home, I sent him a picture and he was able to translate it all. The verdict the X-ray and CT came back normal luckily, but I was concussed. Doctors orders; to rest for a few days and take it easy. That's pretty hard in our job. My manager then rang me and told me to take the rest of the week off, this was a Saturday and our week finishes on a Tuesday. I effectively spent 4 days grounded, not just by my direct manger, by the operations manager and the resort manager. I was bored out of my mind and desperate to go to work, but they weren't having it which was probably for the best. |
I guess that takes us to the winner of this take down. Well only one of us ended up in the hospital. So that makes it: Laser 1 - Beth 0. And hopefully that's the last of Greek hospitals I will be seeing for a while. The Greek adventure continues ... |
Last updated 21:02 on 4 September 2024