How?

I’d been keen to try the double for quite a while now. I watched a whole bunch of videos and thought how hard can it be… Well turns out this isn’t one of those moves you learn just by thinking about it! I basically completed the first rotation then went round in to the second and, well, forgot to tuck up and hold on tight (despite telling myself a 100 times on the beach to not untuck). Anyway in the instant I realised I needed to tuck up I did, which only just accelerated my head even harder into the water. I came down perfectly on the side of my head, I’m not too sure if I hit any kit or if it was a perfect landing to the side of my face, either way I’d never hit the water so hard and I don’t really remember the second or two between hitting and then holding on to my kit.

After?

I came ashore feeling ok, wanted to check it on the camera and had a chat with my friends Chris and BR. Then they were both walking upwind and (about 5 minutes after I crashed) my whole body just sunk, all the blood ran to my feet and hands and I had no idea what my body was doing, it just felt like I was collapsing/crashing hard. I started to run to my friends and within another 5 minutes I was in hospital in Tarifa, pretty worried as you hear stories of people hitting their head hard and getting haemorrhages, etc… Then every 5 minutes I was getting the same sinking feeling, I was feeling sick and pretty unaware of what was going on. From there I was put on a drip, put in an ambulance and taken on to Algeciras hospital where they gave me morphine and a whole load of test/scans. Fortunately the scans were clear of  a broken skull or haemorrhaging but I was diagnosed with concussion.

Now?

I’m now just chilling in bed for 48 hours to see if I get any swelling… Then if I’m all clear I’ll be back on the water by Wednesday, I hope! Next time a helmet will be pretty useful and an impact vest… I have quite a bit more respect for the guys that do doubles so well now, you see them so often it almost looks easy but really it turns out that getting it wrong can suck pretty hard.