“I was sent straight to the trauma ward. My ribs were badly broken, one lung was partially collapsed, the other wasn’t working.”
Last Saturday, the shaper and former pro Dylan Longbottom was gifted a front-row seat to his mortality after being driven chest-first into a limestone pinnacle at a wave he, and others, describe as the heaviest in Australia.
Longbottom, who is forty-nine, is, or at least was, on a slab-hunting tour of the world with his preternaturally talented twenty-year-old daughter Summa. A few weeks back they were at Shipsterns in Tasmania, which was followed by Victoria and, last week, a detour to South Australia.
It was Dylan’s hard-charging brother Daz, who busted his neck on an Indo trip fifteen years ago and wound up in a chair, who let me know his little bro was in hozzy.
So I call Dylan, who’s in fine spirits, despite being surrounded by people in ICU who’ll never make it out of hospital alive, to hear his wild story.
“Well, first,” he says, “it was a big day. Huge period. Eighteen seconds. The biggest slabs. The gnarliest slab in Australia. I was with Kip Caddy, Nathan Florence and (Moroccan big-waver) Jerome Sahyoun and they all agreed. It was six-to-ten feet, some twelve, maybe fifteen-footers. I towed Jerome into a bunch, then Noa Deane and Harry Bryant who were down there. Then it was my turn. I got one and it turned into a mutant. I was already committed, I had my line, going for it, and it gurgled out and I fell right at the bottom. Worst spot. On the biggest wave of the day. I got sucked over the falls and then first impact I didn’t hit but on the second impact I got impaled on a limestone pinnacle. It’s not flat there, it’s like Pipeline. I landed right on my chest and, through my impact suit, I blew out my ribcage and punctured my lung. I didn’t know, I was just out of breath. I was… struggling… for breath and in a world of pain. Kip and Jerome came and saved me. That was it, one and done.”
Even so, Dylan didn’t wanna end the sesh and it was only an intervention from Sahyoun that kept him out of the water. The sight of her old boy on the sidelines wheezing didn’t deter his little gal Summa who told him, “I’ll be sweet Dad”, but Sayhoun told her, “You’re not surfing today.”
Blown lung, ribs shattered. What’d Dylan do? Busted the necks of a few coldies and gulped a handful of the anti-inflammatory Nurofen he found in a kitchen draw at their rental.
“You’d never know he was so injured,” says the filmmaker Tim Bonython, “After the wipeout the painkillers and beers were making him feel okay.”
That night, he “woke up in a world of pain. I struggled. I took my painkillers, had a few more beers” and sat in a lounge chair until dawn when they went back to the wave and Summer got her desired bombs.
What followed was an overnight twelve-hour drive to the South Australian capital Adelaide, which included a brief chase by the cops with Moroccan Sahyoun unsure of what to do when police lights are flashed, and a two-hour flight to Sydney.
Dylan’s been belted around in big waves before so he knows injuries. And he figured, busted ribs, maybe a cracked sternum, nothing a doctor can do, just gotta ride it out.
Still, he went to his local GP who sent him for x-rays where the extent of his injuries were revealed.
“I was sent straight to the trauma ward, my ribs were badly broken like in a car crash, and tubes were put in my lungs to drain ’em. One lung was partially collapsed, the other wasn’t working. Doc said I was lucky to survive the flight ’cause of the pressure. I could’ve gone into cardiac arrest.”
After surgery on Friday, Dylan spent the weekend in ICU but today he’s been released to recuperate at home, two months or thereabouts out of the water, but he reckons he’ll be able to shape, slowly, maybe two sleds a day.
The obvious question to ask, I suppose, is if this can happen to him, does he worry about his kid pushing not only her own limits but the boundaries of the sport?
“It’s heavy, bro,” he says. “It’s worrying but then it’s rewarding at the same thing. It’s hard to explain. People ask me, how do you do it, but the week before this, we were at Shipsterns and she got the craziest one and she was actually smiling while she was on the wave. She loves it. She has no fear. I always try to drop her right on the edge, not too deep, not in a bad zone and I get her in early. But she’s been doing it for a long time now, she surfed Nazaré when she was thirteen. She knows how to take a beating. She’s the only girl chasing class. She towed Teahupoo three weeks ago on a big swell.”
Still, a daddy is a daddy.
“It’s your daughter and you don’t want anything to go wrong but at the same time when you see how much enjoyment and fulfilment she gets from her adventuring it’s so good. It’s living life to the max and you’re doing with your daughter. She loves it and I love it. We’re going on adventures around the world, and it’s not just about the waves, the ride’s the bonus, but having fun in between. It’s the best time.”
