“My mate said he thought my board had snapped because of the sound but then I realised it had been my shin!”
If it ain’t a Great White coming atcha from below, eyes dead, jaws ready to cleave you in two, now it’s jacked seals turning surfers into bottom bitches.
Cornwall’s Nathan Phillips, “a local surfing legend”, was shredding at Porthleven, one of the best waves around, last Friday when a seal started giving him heat as he paddled back out.
The animal pulled on his leash, whiplashing his board into his stilt, breaking it in two.
Phillips, forty two and standing six-five in high-heels, was then too big to squeeze into the Air Ambulance and was forced to lay in “stinking” water inhaling a “cocktail of antibiotics”.
“I had just been paddling out and something started tugging on my leash,” he told Walesonline. “It kind of freaked me out because I didn’t know what it was. After I worked out that it was a seal and fended it off, it was just playing I think, but a wave then crashed down on me just after at a weird angle and sent my board flying into my shin.
“I remembered my mate saying he thought my board had snapped because of the sound – but then I realised it had been my shin when I felt my foot hitting the back of my leg. I just started screaming with pain, and my mate dragged me onto his board and told me to start paddling back to shore.”
Phillips is in a Devon hozzy awaiting surgery with his leg pinned by a metal frame.
A GoFundMe has been set up etc.
“He’s currently on morphine waiting for surgery so the least we could do would be to set up a page to try and raise some money for him,” said his pal Alec. “Him and his partner are expecting their next child in only a few weeks too, so it’s not the best time.”
As for seals,
“We do get a lot of ’em down here in Cornwall and they do try and play with you or mess about with you a bit sometimes.”