TATY FRANS
In Fuerteventura I remember reaching to the first mark with Julien Quentel on top of me, I heard his board coming down so I pointed downwind to avoid him coming close! After that I only remember seeing Antoine Albeau ahead so I decided to bear off downwind and somehow I accelerated to this amazing speed but did not see Pierre Mortefon straight downwind of me. I still remember hearing Pierre screaming ‘Hey Taty’ but all this happened in a fraction of a second. With that much speed avoiding that crash was impossible. I remember my boom touching Pierre’s back and everything exploded after that.
I felt the fin go in and out of my leg the moment it happened. I let my equipment go and grabbed my leg with full force and was screaming in pain. Pierre was angry with me at first but I was screaming and he helped me stay on top of the water because I felt I couldn’t keep my body up. One hand was holding the open wound and the other hand wasn’t enough to keep my body floating. Then I heard Diony’s voice who also came to help me. I immediately looked down and tried to move my foot and as soon as I saw at least some movement, I was relieved. Diony helped me get on the Jet Ski and they brought me to the beach. I can still remember telling Diony ‘Please tell them don’t touch my leg, don’t touch my leg.’ At that moment I felt that my leg was fully destroyed; the pain was ok but I cried because I knew I would be out for a long time. I was taken to the medical room on the beach and then to the hospital. I am thankful to Gonzalo, Diony, Amado, Sarah Quita’s mother, Antoine Albeau and Jamie from the PWA for their help. I don’t like to say bad things but the Fuerteventura hospital did a really poor job! It took them more than 5 hours to check me in. When they did they just cleaned the wound and stitched it closed without doing any proper checks on the injury. This left me in pain with sleepless nights from the day it happened till the day I got back to Bonaire.
Big thank you to Jordy Vonk for helping me travel and taking care of me from Fuerteventura to Amsterdam and storing the bags, much appreciated amigo! Once in Holland family and friends took care of me but there wasn’t much they could have done to help. I went to another doctor but the result was that ‘Everything will be okay’, and I believed them but then at night the pain was getting worse. So I felt I needed to go home to have proper treatment with better doctors. Travelling back home took 12 painful hours. It was horrible pain with the painkillers not helping. I took a strong sleeping pill and slept for 6 hours and that was at least ok. I arrived on Bonaire on Saturday and by Sunday morning blood started to pour out from the stitches. I had doctors come to my home to check on me and they cleaned it up and said if it keeps bleeding we will send you to the hospital. The blood never stopped and the pain was getting worse so I was rushed to the hospital. The surgeon opened me up and the wound was badly infected. After the stitches were removed I had to have another operation, properly cleaning the wound all out. It took about 1 hour and 30 minutes, where they took out all the muscle, the stitches on the inside, plus 0.5 litre of infected dirty blood had to be sucked out.
As I write this I am back in bed with a vacuum dressing for another 3 days before another clean up then they will add the vacuum again until the wound is healed as they are no longer able to stitch it. The muscles are pretty badly torn so this will also take some time, but the good thing is that the blood is no longer infected and the wound is healing. I live to heal one day at a time and see how everything develops from here on. I will be out from windsurfing for a while but I will take my time before I return. I miss windsurfing already but it’s more important to recover 100%! I still don’t think we should have rules in slalom. Rules are usually abused by one person who always whimpers when things don’t go their way. I like racing because I like the adrenaline side of the sport. I never believed in a million thoughts that this bad crash would have ever happened to me. I see windsurf slalom racing as the equivalent of Formula One car racing or Moto GP, it is exciting to see both these sports so why should we break this excitement in windsurfing? Rules would destroy the way we race. They would remove the excitement. We need to keep slalom racing where the viewers can feel the adrenaline. Of course safety is important but I think what the PWA should do is to have the organization have better medical care once a sailor is injured. Because what they did to me in Fuerteventura would have left me not able to compete anymore. What happened to Ethan and I were accidents and accidents can occur. This could have also happened in a training session or on any other racing days! Maybe reinforced wetsuits can be an option. I will for sure change the way I sail in some areas! I will take the risks more seriously into consideration, like who is straight downwind of me but I will still stand my ground and fight to win just like everyone is doing. We are racing, we are not playing follow the leader game!
