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The Ride from Hell |
| 26/10/2012 |
The Ride from Hell
By John McCarthy
I can’t remember what day of the week it was, it felt like a Thursday or a Friday, but I’m not sure. It was mid winter Cape Town and I was running late for my flight. Earlier that day I’d been off Spooner’s boat, near The Sentinel, filming and surfing Dungeons. The North Westerly gale that had arrived a couple of hours into our session and sent us scampering back to the harbour at Hout Bay was now creating havoc with the traffic. Headlights on, windscreen wipers full tilt and feet slipping between the clutch accelerator and the brake. Visibility? The brake lights in front of me, that’s it. Camera gear and backpack in the boot. My 10ft Rhino Chaser strapped on the roof through the rental car with long straps now leaking rainwater onto my lap. Nothing I can do. Trapped in a gridlock of tin all fleeing the city before the winter storm really sets in. Moving forward an inch at a time. We’re all too late, it has overtaken us already. Now trapped in the rental being buffered about by the banshee wind, leaden sky and rain moving sideways. Front and back windscreens misting up. Hand on the glass. Rub, rub, rub. Wet. Water trickling down the back of my neck. Every second word running through my brain starts with ‘f’. At this point all I want to do is make my flight home.
As I enter the airplane cabin, brushing rain off my face and shouldering the heavy camera bag the other passengers glare back at me, the reason for their late departure. I register that the flight is almost empty, maybe 15 people dotted around the 737. I don’t care, relief floods through me as I sit down and fasten my seatbelt. I made it! The cabin attendant wastes no time in locking the doors and going through the pre-flight routine. I let my mind slip back to the incredible rides earlier that day and to some of the footage we got. Amazing. My reverie is broken by the captain who comes on the intercom.
“For those of you who did not chicken out of tonight’s flight please will you make absolutely sure you DO NOT remove your seatbelts until I give the all clear, its going to be a hell of a ride out of here.”
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For the first time since Spooner’s boat docked in the Hout Bay harbour I start to pay attention to the weather, properly. Like a surfer looking at the ocean. It’s almost like my senses were switched off in the mad rush from the harbour to the airport through the traffic while I rejoined the rat race, but now they are back on. Full alert! And I don’t like what they’re telling me. I try to look out of the rain splattered window but there is only darkness beyond as the plane is buffeted all over the runway while taxing for take off. In a moment of clarity and 15 minutes too late, I realise that this is a night better suited to crowding into the Hout Bay Hotel pub and drinking beer next to the fire. This is not a night for flying!
As we take off I am convinced the plane is going to fall out of the sky, either that or crash into the mountains outside of Stellenbosch. In 30 years of flying all over the world I have never experienced anything like this. It feels as if the wings are being torn off the plane. Here and there around the cabin the luggage compartments pop open strewing their contents around the cabin. My stomach muscles ace against the seatbelt which holds me in my seat. Like one of those gravity rides at the amusement park I’m being thrown around like a rag doll. Without my seatbelt on I’d have broken my neck long ago. Oxygen masks drop from the roof. This is a living nightmare and I’m stuck in the middle of it. I’m in the isle seat on the right hand side of the plane. To my right in the window seat is a businessman in a suit. Eyes closed, white knuckles clenched around the arm-rest, lips moving slilently. I can see he is praying. To my left in the isle seat is a Muslim woman with a full head covering. She’s losing it as the dam wall that’s been holding back her anxiety bursts and gives way to a full blown panic attack. She’s alternating between sobbing and whailing, a high pitched keening, snot coming out of her nose and a curious kind of foam regales the corners of her mouth. Every now and again I can decipher a cry for help to Allah. Her terror is contagious. The turbulence is bone jarring. The moments of sick weightlessness followed by a crash that shakes everything in the plane to its core including the 15 passengers, three crew and two pilots trying to keep this bird in the sky.
Suddenly there is a startling silence. Oh no I think to myself, the wings have finally come off, this is it!
A few seconds later the intercom comes on.
“Wooohooo! That was the most radical flight we’ve ever had out of Cape Town! The good news folks is its over and all quiet and clear from now until we land.
I think to myself, this guy has to be a surfer. Who else would celebrate a near death ride in that manner?
I breathe properly again for the first time since I sat down in this seat which feels like a lifetime ago but my watch tells me was only 10 minutes. The cabin looks as if a tornado just swept through it. Debris and sobbing passengers everywhere. The air hostesses run to comfort the Muslim woman. They give her a tranquiliser. Slowly things return to normal as baggage is restowed and secured. White knuckles make way for timid smiles of relief.
Eventually the drinks trolley comes around.
“Would you care for something to drink sir?” The air hostess asks me politely. I can see she’s still a bit ruffled, but she’s regained her composure remarkably well in the circumstances.
“Yes I’d like two beers, a bottle of wine and a double gin and tonic please.” I reply straight-faced.
She doesn’t blink, and puts the drinks down on my tray.
“And for you sir?” she says as she leans across and asks the businessman sitting next to me.
“I’ll have the same!”
Sometime during that night the Windguru reading at Cape Point reached 10m, while the captain and crews of many ships around the peninsula struggled to prevent themselves being run aground in the storm. Some more successfully than others! The Crayfish Factory was cut off and the waves washed over the promenade at Sea Point and into the road at Camps Bay. Fishing trawlers inside the harbour at Kalk Bay were damaged as waves exploded over the breakwater.
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