Matthew Bryce, who was rescued after spending 32 hours adrift on Monday evening, has described how he feared he would die and how he had pledged never to surf again.
The 23-year-old Scot said that before his rescue he had “made himself at peace” with not surviving his ordeal which began when he went surfing from Machrihanish beach near Campbeltown in Scotland shortly before 11.30am Sunday.
Shortly after he began surfing he got into difficulties and off-shore winds brought him out to sea. Mr Bryce, from Airdrie in North Lanarkshire was spotted by a Glasgow Prestwick coastguard at 7.30pm on Monday evening, winched aboard and taken to the Ulster Hospital in Belfast where he remains in a “comfortable” condition.
I thought I was going to die and pretty much had made peace with all
He was located north of Rathlin Island and 13 miles away from where he set off surfing. Up to 50 members of the coastguard and the RNLI from Scotland and Northern Ireland were involved in the rescue.
“The wind and water was just relentless,” Mr Bryce said from his hospital bed. He described how at one point he got back to within about a mile of land, only for the tide to change direction and drag him out again.
“It got to the point where my paddling was ineffective, but I was doing it to keep myself warm,” said Mr Bryce in an interview with BBC Scotland.
He said as night fell he feared he would die. “It was incredibly lonely and quiet because there was just nothing, just waves,” he said.
“I hadn’t seen any helicopters. I was thinking I was going to die - I was almost convinced. I didn’t think I would see sunrise,” he added.
He said he saw the lights of ships and tried and get into a shipping lane in the hope someone might see him. Through the night he continued to paddle towards the ships through the night but by daylight he was starting to pass out and fall off his board.
In a shaking voice Mr Bryce described how at 7.30 pm he saw the coastguard helicopter but feared the crew had not seen him.
He said shortly before that “I thought I was going to die and pretty much had made peace with all”.
“And then I heard the helicopter. So, I dropped off the board and I lifted the board up, and started waving the board. And they flew right over me and I thought they had missed me,” he recalled. “But then they turned around and they saved my life.”
