Surfed 'til my eye's got sunburned

10/8/2012

Ok, so there is a downside to surfing your brains out in a tropical paradise. It's called photokeratitis...or "arc eye's" to the rest of us. A 5 hour sesh on a bright sunny day resulted in me burning the crap outta my cornea's! Take my word for it, this is not recommended!

I was sitting out in the line-up trying to work out why suddenly my eye's were just closing, and refusing to open. Like someone had slipped me a sleeping tablet or something. Try as I might to open them they just kept slamming shut. I gave up in the end and headed back to the boat.

The next morning I woke up, with eyeballs that felt like they had been kicked around the streets of Motherwell like soccer balls. Forget even trying to open them outside a darkened room, they just teared up totally and closed of there own accord. Downed a coupla anti-inflamm's and squirted in some eye drops and hoped for the best. Made all the more annoying by the fact that there were perfect lil 3-4ft lines coming down the reef.

Ended up having to spend most of the morning inside the cabin and far away from the eye-frying UV rays. Luckily discovered that the Kindle ebook can actually read to you, that's something the paper books can't do!

But as Sundays are braai days, even in the Maldives, we missioned over to the island to cook a choppie or two. The locals had made us a make-shift braai grid using some chicken wire and metal oddments lying about. Hard to beat sitting under a palm tree looking out over glassy lines peeling off the reef and chowing your chop! Even if your eye's feel kak....