{"id":13886,"date":"2019-02-18T11:48:45","date_gmt":"2019-02-18T04:48:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saltwater-dreaming.com\/australian-surf-charter-skipper-tells-of-indonesian-tsunami\/"},"modified":"2019-12-02T07:55:16","modified_gmt":"2019-12-02T07:55:16","slug":"australian-surf-charter-skipper-tells-of-indonesian-tsunami","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saltwater-dreaming.com\/news\/2019\/02\/18\/australian-surf-charter-skipper-tells-of-indonesian-tsunami\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian surf charter skipper tells of Indonesian tsunami"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Cindy Wockner and Gita Anggun Athika in Jakarta From: [url=http:\/\/www.perthnow.com.au\/news\/australian-skipper-tells-of-terrifying-indonesian-tsunami\/story-e6frg12c-1225943867852]News Limited newspapers [\/url] October 26, 2010 3:34PM <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><iframe src =\"http:\/\/video.perthnow.com.au\/embed\/1624958133\/Aussies-survive-boatwreck-in-quake?player=narrow\" width=\"330\" height=\"330\" frameborder=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/p>\n<p>VIDEO: Aussies survive boatwreck in quake<\/p>\n<p><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>THE Australian skipper of a surf charter boat caught up in the Indonesian tsunami watched the water being sucked away before a four metre wave hurtled towards him, breaking over his boat and catapulting it onto a nearby boat, which then burst into flames.Lee Clarke, the skipper of a surf charter boat called Freedom 3, says that for some unknown reason he woke up and was out on the deck looking at the moon when the drama began unfolding about 11pm on Monday night.<\/p>\n<p>The rest of his six Australian surfing guests, mostly from Clovelly in Sydney, were all asleep downstairs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was bizarre, I just lay down for about 10 minutes and I got up, I don\u2019t know why I got up, just intuition and I looked out at the moon and just looked around, then it started to unfold,\u201d Mr Clarke, originally of Port Stephens, said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe water just started draining really hard and the anchor grounded. I looked and saw the tsunami breaking across the whole boat and before we knew it we were picked up and speared straight into the Midas.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019d say the wave was four metres conservative. It came right over the top deck of the boat. The bow of our vessel landed on the top deck of the Midas. We got catapulted.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Mr Clarke estimates his boat was lifted three to four metres in the air before it smashed into the Midas, which was anchored nearby in the bay.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPretty much the tsunami came in and broke across the whole bay. It crashed right over the back of the boat, picked us up and catapulted as about 50 metres, 100 metres away and right into the vessel and the vessel caught on fire,\u201d he said of the collision with the Midas.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe were both up on the beach, the Midas was in front of us. Then a second wave came and I was able to start the engine and reverse out of there and headed for the sea.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mr Clarke said all the surfers from the Midas, were washed into the water. He managed to rescue two of them, while the others were washed several hundred metres inland, to the jungle.<\/p>\n<p>He said one of them had been in the downstairs cabin of the Midas and was suffering smoke inhalation and was \u201cas black as a chimney sweeper\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The other had jumped off on his board and had paddled desperately to get to the Freedom 3 to be resecued.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEveryone was yelling out, come on and go, and once he was on I got out,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Clarke said he had not felt the first earthquake, which measured 7.2, about 11pm on Monday night.<\/p>\n<p> He said three more aftershocks had followed, which he had felt in the boat \u2013 from 3.30am and the last one at 6am today. The earthquake and aftershocks have devastated areas of the Mentawai island chain, off Padang in Sumatra.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Clarke has been working in the Mentawai Islands for the past six years and he said this was \u201cby far\u201d the worst experience of his life.<\/p>\n<p>This was to have been his last trip of the season before heading to Thailand. It was to have been the Midas\u2019s last day of the surfing season yesterday as well. The two boats had been on 11-day charters.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEveryone is alive, Thank God. It was very full on,\u201d Mr Clarke said. <\/p>\n<p>He said he was now \u201cjaded\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have got six guests on the boat, from Sydney, Clovelly. They are all fine, they are bit rattled but they are fine.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mr Clarke said all of those involved now just wanted to get home as soon as possible.<\/p>\n<p>[url=http:\/\/www.saltwater-dreaming.com\/gallery\/thumbnails.php?album=30]See pics of the tsunami that hit is December 2004[\/url]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cindy Wockner and Gita Anggun Athika in Jakarta From: [url=http:\/\/www.perthnow.com.au\/news\/australian-skipper-tells-of-terrifying-indonesian-tsunami\/story-e6frg12c-1225943867852]News Limited newspapers [\/url] October 26, 2010 3:34PM VIDEO: Aussies survive boatwreck in quake THE Australian skipper of a surf charter boat caught up in the Indonesian tsunami watched the water being sucked away before a four metre wave hurtled towards him, breaking over his boat &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.saltwater-dreaming.com\/news\/2019\/02\/18\/australian-surf-charter-skipper-tells-of-indonesian-tsunami\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Australian surf charter skipper tells of Indonesian tsunami&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[24],"class_list":["post-13886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-surfing-news-archive","tag-surfing-news-archive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saltwater-dreaming.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saltwater-dreaming.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saltwater-dreaming.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saltwater-dreaming.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saltwater-dreaming.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saltwater-dreaming.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13886\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saltwater-dreaming.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saltwater-dreaming.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saltwater-dreaming.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}