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By Jamie Jeffers

About 15 years ago, while in the Navy in Puerto Rico, I was windsurfing
about 8 miles off shore... A storm came up out of nowhere and the
wavesquickly rose to about 12-16 feet.

Although I'm a pretty accomplished windsurfer, the wind and waves were
so strong that I couldn't stay up on the board. Anyway, the sea and
skystarted getting darker and darker, and I noticed what appeared to be
boiling water up ahead. The waves were throwing me all over the place
and it was all I could do just to hang on to the board. As I got
closerto the boiling water I saw that it was a bed of coral, just under the
surface. What was happening was, the waves were sucking the water up
into themselves and thereby exposing the coral bed beneath. Then the
waves would crash down onto the exposed coral.

Just as I realized what was going on, I got tossed right on top of the
coral. I got cut up all over, and believe it or not, the waves sucked
me back away from the coral bed and then tossed me onto it again... It
was horrendous. I flopped around on the surface trying to "crawl"
away,the whole time getting knocked around by the waves. Keep in mind that
this was going on about 7 miles from shore. I eventually freed myself
(the windsurfer was long gone) and I had blood coming from seven or
eight major gashes... Sharks? None showed up, but I figured I was
sharkfood anyway.

After an hour or two of swimming towards shore, a boat showed up and
plucked me from the sea. That's my injury story.