Australian Skipper Tells of Terrifying Indonesian Tsunami

KOMPAS.com - 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 near Kepulauan Mentawai, off Sumatra's west. The rest of his six Australian surfing guests, mostly from Clovelly in Sydney, were all asleep downstairs.

“It was bizarre, I just lay down for about 10 minutes and I got up, I don’t know why I got up, just intuition and I looked out at the moon and just looked around, then it started to unfold,” Mr Clarke, originally of Port Stephens, said.

“The 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.

“I’d 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.”

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.

“Pretty 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,” he said of the collision with the Midas.

“We 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.”

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.

He said one of them had been in the downstairs cabin of the Midas and was suffering smoke inhalation and was “as black as a chimney sweeper”. The other had jumped off on his board and had paddled desperately to get to the Freedom 3 to be resecued.

“Everyone was yelling out, come on and go, and once he was on I got out,” he said.

Mr Clarke said he had not felt the first earthquake, which measured 7.7, and struck at 9.42pm yesterday (1.42am AEDT today). He said three more aftershocks had followed, which he had felt in the boat – 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. Mr Clarke has been working in the Mentawai Islands for the past six years and he said this was “by far” the worst experience of his life.

This was to have been his last trip of the season before heading to Thailand. It was to have been the Midas’s last day of the surfing season yesterday as well. The two boats had been on 11-day charters.

“Everyone is alive, Thank God. It was very full on,” Mr Clarke said.

He said he was now “jaded”.

“I have got six guests on the boat, from Sydney, Clovelly. They are all fine, they are bit rattled but they are fine.”

Mr Clarke said all of those involved now just wanted to get home as soon as possible.