Thread: What could go wrong?

Hi guys new to the forum here and I thought I would share my most tragic/unfortunate/f**ked up story I have.

So to start this I met I guy that was doing a lot of traveling and only was talking to him for a couple of hours. A few months later a got a message from him about a spearfishing trip he was organizing to Banda Aceh (Indonesia). So I jumped at it and booked flights etc. Mistake number 1. Turns out Aceh is strict Muslim part of Indo and I was booked to go at Ramadan.

So me this pasty Irish kid shows up and can’t get anything to eat until sundown. So I just spend the day looking around Aceh which was hit and leveled by the tsunami. Next day I get a ferry out to Poulo Weh which is an island a couple of hours away for mainland.

So my mate hooked me up with a place to stay on the island so I had two days to kill until he got there so I decided to rent a motorbike and look around the island and do a bit of shore fishing. In those two days I was caught in nasty currents pestered by sharks and got thrown against rocks and lost my speargun and one fin. So by the time my mate got here I was done but he said that let’s go back to the point so I was like ok got to save face. So we head out on a shore dive and low and behold what does one of the guys find at the bottom wedged in some rock... MY SPEARGUN!

So a couple of days went buy incident free while we tried to organize a boat out to and island in the middle of nowhere 6 hours away in a busy shipping lane during stormy season.

So we wrangled up a misfit crew of 6 (which would eventually become 5) and took this boat out. On our maiden voyage 3 hours out on this wooden fishing boat a storm blew in and started battering the boat and huge wave crashed into the side and broke our bilge pump (what gets the water out of the boat) so the captain goes down to fix and ends up passing out from smoke inhalation so we have to drag him up and go down taking turns to bucket water out of the engine room so the both doesn’t sink. One of the guys nearly got washed off deck when I wave rolled over the boat and hit him. You couldn’t say Indonesia boats have high sides more like shin high. So we end up turning around and heading back to Weh takes us a couple of hours but we all make it back head to toe in oil sweat and sick.

Two days pass and weather picks up and boat is fixed. One of the guys back out he says he couldn’t do it again so we’re down to 5 (3 foreigners and 2 locals). So we gear up again spirits are high and make it out that night to the island in record time.

Next morning we wake up and spearfish some of the best waters I’ve fished huge GTs, Snapper, Grouper, Dogtooth Tuna. So that day we but close to 200kg on fish on the boat including a pb GT for me of over 50kg.

The next day wasn’t as good!! So we started the day off with the boat not starting which was a bummer but we could just swim from the boat around the island we were anchored at. So two of the guys I was with swam off to hunt some fish and I was just chilling on the boat jigging for squid. Two hours passed and no sign of them so I took out my speargun and said Id go look for them and try hammer a few fish. Little did I know as soon as I got into the water I was battling killer currents that was sweeping me further from the island/boat. I remember getting to a stage where I was stuck swimming at a steady pace I wasn’t getting further or closer I was just in that one spot for 2/3 hours. That’s when I thought my time was up. Ended up swimming across into another current that swept me into some large surf against jagged rocks. I was battling the swell to swim around the rocks and as I was doing this a huge GT 60/70+kg swam no further then two meters from me and swam beside me for a couple of seconds. This was mother’s nature’s f**k you as I spent the other day spearing lots of GT’s. I ended up getting dragged into the surf and slammed against rocks. Felt like someone put me into a washing machine a concrete block. Anyway ended up being washed up on a beach on the island cut to ribbons with everything wash/ripped off even my rashie. Luckily the line from the speargun wrapped around my arm and found its way onto to the beach with me even luckier I didn’t get impaled by the spear. So I lie there for an hour make all my bones are ok. Shoulder got pretty damaged but no broken bones. Ended up traipsing through the island for and hour (should of been twenty minute walk tops). Make it to far side of island and guys are on boat and swim out and help me in. They say they made it just onto the island before they got sweeped out.

So here we are waiting for a fishing boat to pass by that never does. So we are officially stranded. The next day roles on and everybody is down turns out the second drum of water that was meant to be filled when we left was empty. So we’re officially out of water. Guys swim in with the local deckhand and climb trees to get coconuts. That day passes by without a boat. That night however a boat comes and says that they will jump our battery in the morning. We are delighted we’re saved.

Morning comes and boat has disappeared we are officially stranded again. There is a small military base on the island and they have a big battery they use for powering there radios so we end up trading fish for ration packs and to use the battery. So we end up wrapping this huge battery in a heap of life jackets cling film and plastic bags and swim it out to our boat end of leaking acid when we’re swimming with it but it’s fine in the end. Wham bam thank you mam our boat starts. We’re saved.

I’m driving the boat and we’re an hour into our journey back and the engine gives a little splutter than a bigger one and then dead!! We are again stranded. So we are floating and of course the currents are drifting us back to the island and we are in danger of capsizing. Two hours drifting and we see a boat so we get a towel and soak it in diesel and light it to try sos(we have no cb radio only one phone between the 5) the fishing boat is more interested in getting out to his spot now that the weather is good and fish is fetching a good price. Eventually one of the guys get reception and calls coast guard. So a navy battleship ends up coming to tow us back to Weh. We get boarded and camera crew comes on and interviews us 5 malnourished men.

Finally we make it back but have to get medical checks take interviews make bribes to pay for our rescue with fish. So we have a flight out the next day and we need to get to mainland but they will not let us go. So we end up bribing one of the coast guards to smuggle us off the island. So we end up being taken down to the port snuck onto a boat and begin the journey back.

Everything else fell into place and we all mage our flights and went our separate ways never to talk about the trip again. I ended up losing 10kg over the course of the two weeks trip.


Sorry for the long story hope some of you guys make it this far.

Signing out
Jonas

Trying to find out how to post pictures when I do I’ll put some up of the dreaded trip.

One hell of a story bro!

Tom Hanks might be worth a call? Good story with back up photos, Awesome and lucky trip!!

well thats what happens in muslim places: indonesia, pakistan, london, paris....................

There is a point on every adventure when you’re better off NOT getting out there and doing it. Well done on surviving!

Haha gonetropo controversial much �� wasn’t at the Tom hanks stage yet..

Yeah I agree about taking risks and using cool headed but it was a case of things can’t get any worse and then they did.

In terms of the boat he was the only skipper that was crazy enough to head out and my mate used him a year previous with no hassle (actually came back from the trip with extra money because fish made a good price) but didn’t help that he was a glue sniffer either

A story to tell your grandkids one day - adventures like this teach you about life and yourself!
Nice fish too

You eat GT?

Hahaha classic yarn!

Originally Posted by Gibo

You eat GT?

Aren't they riddled with seq? Heard they aren't flash eating.

Got to watch diving in that oceanic current. Good boatman is a must in those conditions, Ive had a couple of situations where we would have been screwed without an on to it boatman.

Its pretty freaky kicking as hard as you can and going nowhere

A trip to remember for sure, plenty of fish and big ones .

What every you do don’t take up preaching on the Andaman Islands you might end up like ya fish
Cool yarn though

Originally Posted by Gibo

You eat GT?

You can eat it but large GTs don’t taste great and there is a risk of ciguatera poisoning were large pelagic consume a lot of reef fish that have this toxin and it stays in there system. But smaller GTs are delicious it’s like anything if it’s cooked well it will taste good even bulls oysters but that’s a story for another day. The big one in the picture was going to be taken back to skippers family.