Devastation in Paradise – Chapter 53 Excerpts
While he had been at work, he had missed the February Lodge meeting. For the rest of his career, missing out on every second meeting became the norm. He wished he could attend all harmonies, but like every other offshore worker, being absent was part of life. Nevertheless, God willing, he would be home for the next meeting on 12 March. It was his first regular meeting after his initiation, and he was very excited. The sole earlier meeting was his initiation, which was all about him. Now he could experience regular Lodge meeting rituals for the first time.
However, Paal and Patrick travelled to Prachuap Khiri Khan before his next lodge meeting for the 2004 Thai Sky Festival. Exotic Sky Adventures organised the Boogie, the same fantastic outfit that had organised the “Below the Wind” Boogie in Malaysia in 2001. The main organisers were Hermann Landsmann and Karina Willerup. It was a two-week event with eight jump days, drawing jumpers from all corners of the world. Paal and Patrick, along with most of the active ex-pat skydivers in South East Asia and several good friends from Australia and beyond, were passionately looking forward to attending that year’s event. On 07 March, he jumped behind the wheel of his BMW.
A beautiful and fun-loving Thai girlfriend, born in Cambodia and whom he had been dating for some time, was in the passenger seat. Three skydivers were in the rear seat, Ragnar Lie (Raggen), a Norwegian wing suite skydiver and base jumper Paal had befriended in 1997, and two other accomplished skydivers also residing in Pattaya. Patrick also drove down in his pickup truck with his present girlfriend and two Belgian skydivers, one of whom was Michel Van Beirs, Belgian ex-Para extraordinary, a legend in the sky diving community and a licenced reserve cute packer. They all arrived after dark and checked in at a small local Bed and Breakfast near the airport at the south end of the small sleepy town, having pre-booked numerous rooms.
Prachuap Khiri Khan is famous for its beauty, and when Paal got up in the morning, he could see why. The town is located just south of the better-known beach town of Hua Hin. It has a small military airport, with two tarmac runways, one longer measuring two thousand and fifty-seven meters in length and a transverse shorter strip measuring one thousand meters. The strips were located on a peninsula at the bottom of a beautiful forested hill named Khao Lom Muak, surrounded by long white-sanded beaches where the event’s drop zone centre was located.
The most spectacular is Lime beach, with small fishing boats and palm trees. Paal took in the area’s stunning beauty, tied the laces on his running shoes and headed towards the hill. It was a warm morning, and as he ran up the rocky track towards the one hundred and ninety-one-meter-high peak, the monkeys scattered out of his path. Some were curious and stared, while others seemed annoyed by the early morning disturbance. From the peak, the view was even more spectacular. Before heading back down, he stood there for a few minutes, enjoying the pleasure of endorphins and the breathtaking scenery.
Back at the B&B, Patrick was preparing his rig for the pre-boogie lift later that morning, and Paal quickly joined him and started gathering his gear. Arie Krabbedick arrived in a minibus with a Belgian film team that would shoot a documentary about Exotic Sky adventures. Some novice Indonesian skydivers, friends of Arie, came in a second minibus, having travelled up from Bali and Indonesia to acquire AFF jump licences.
They preoccupied themselves with helping the Belgian film team load cameras and film equipment. Everybody was in great spirits and smilingly packed the cars and drove convoy style to the jump site where the unofficial pre-rumble test lifts were planned. The Boogie would officially begin in earnest the next day when close to two hundred and forty jumpers would congregate. The Thai Airforce were providing a DC-3 with BT-67s, several C-130 Hercules, and a Bell Huey helicopter.
There were around forty experienced skydivers ready to get the pre-show started. The majority were very professional civilian jumpers. Several others were ex-military. The Belgians, assisted by the Indonesians, set up the cameras and started filming. The beautiful blue sky was inviting; Why Yearn To Fall, Man So Very Small, Sparkling Blue Skys Call, That Is Really All.
Then it was time; the DC-3’s two BT-67 powerful turboprop engines were fired up, producing the roar that all skydivers love, accompanied by the sweet smell of jet fuel. The dressed-up jumpers piled into the plane, a majestic old bird that had started life as a DC-3 military transport plane before being retrofitted with large turboprops and a larger rear side door. All the plane’s passenger seats had been removed for the planned two-week event.
Then they took off on the Boogie’s first (Albeit unofficial) lift and climbed to the pre-determined altitude of fifteen thousand feet. Prior to the loadout, Hermann, the drop zone jumpmaster, had briefed the jumpers about the landing site and told everybody that all landing turns were to be made to the left “Counterclockwise” and not “Clockwise” to avoid collisions. Amongst the jumpers were an elderly experienced Italian parachutist named Antonio (a regular skydiver at Empuriabrava) rumoured to have been in the ninth Paratroopers Assault Regiment, and Andre, an acclaimed Russian Spetsnaz. Both men were ex-special forces with thousands of prior jumps each. Paal felt honoured to be in the company of these experienced skydivers.
On larger lifts with several groups of jumpers, the formation jumpers would normally exit first, then the solo of free flyers last, subject to the lift, load and jump plan. The exit on the DC-3 was through a side door at the aft port side of the plane. The formation groups, including the Italian and Russian jumpers, existed first, then as planned, Patrick and Paal followed. At the door, when Paal looked toward the plane’s horizontal stabiliser (tail fin), he knew he would not slam into it, albeit it seemed frighteningly close.
What followed was the delight of acceleration and a whole minute freefall boosted by the surge of adrenaline, the best drug in the world. After opening their chutes at three thousand five hundred feet, they descended slowly towards the dedicated landing target. Below them, the other multicoloured canopies were dotted around like pretty flowers. Then disaster struck. The Russian and Italian were at the same altitude of two or three hundred hundred meters and started their final rotation to line up into the wind, the direction given by the sizable wind sock placed close to the target landing area. Tragically, Andre, the Russian, did an incorrect right-hand turn, and Antonio, the Italian a correct left-hand turn. Both their canopies collided spun into each other, and ultimately collapsed at least fifty to eighty meters above the ground.
Paal’s heart skipped a beat as he was awfully close to the Italian. It did not end well. The two entangled jumpers plummeted with next to no drag straight down to the grass-covered ground. They both bounced upon impact, a horrible sight that likely broke most of their bones and ruptured multiple internal organs. As soon as they landed, Paal and Patrick ran over to see if they could help. The Italian died almost instantly, but the Russian, a hard-fit man, was incredibly still alive, if you can call someone that broken alive.
Patrick’s helmet camera was still recording, having recorded the whole jump. They and others started attempting first aid, but the injuries were so severe that any form of first aid would be futile if not detrimental. Someone had already summoned the drop zone ambulance. The Russian, accompanied by the corpse of the Italian, was rushed to the hospital. Sadly they could not save him, and Andre passed away a couple of hours later. It was hard to know why the Russian had turned to the right, the wrong way, but he spoke very limited English and perhaps misunderstood the pre-lift instructions that were repetitively given in English.
It was a dreadful, macabre and sad start to the event. Following the fatalities, the welcome party congregation at the Hadthong hotel that evening was a subdued event. The novice Indonesians were understandably pretty shaken up as they first-hand observed the tragedy from a short distance and presumably had some second thoughts.
The organisers decided to continue as planned, and the official Boogie kicked off in the early morning with an extended safety session. The rest of the eight jumpings days of the event was excellent, with four thousand eight hundred and thirty-one individual jumps performed, including thirty-five tandem and fifty-five AFF jumps. There were a few cutaways, including Patrick, who had a low cutaway due to a malfunction. Thirty-two lifts by the three Hercs, forty-four by the DC-3 BT-67s and four by the Bell Huey.
Paal did four to five jumps a day the following three days, then Friday evening, 11 March, he took the two girls with him in the car and headed back to Pattaya so he would be there the next day for his lodge meeting. There was no jumping during the weekend, so he would not be missing out. Patrick decided to stay for the weekend parties.
After the lodge meeting and Harmony dinner at the Royal Cliff Hotel, Paal arrived home, and instead of going to bed, he decided to head directly back to Prachuap. He did not get far, though. The BMW broke down after just leaving the house. Since he had already made up his mind to return that night, he decided to go on his VMAX motorcycle instead. To get to Prachuap Khiri Khan from Pattaya, you must first head northwest a hundred and sixty kilometres through Bangkok, then enter the southbound motorway for three hundred and twenty kilometres down via Hua Hin.
As he passed through Bangkok, a cooling hose on the motorbike ruptured. He had to immediately stop and try to find an open workshop in the early morning hours on a Sunday. It was almost as if the trip was cursed from the start, and some higher power was trying to stop him from travelling south. After roaming around a Bangkok outskirt town on foot, he finally found a little corner shop that ad-hoc magically cut up a piece of non-original hose that they used to replace the blown one. On Sunday afternoon, he arrived back at the B&B, hardly having slept the previous forty-eight hours.
Early the following morning, he ran along the Ao Ma Nao (Lime beach) before heading out to the airfield. The local town council had made something remarkable on the beach. Running the length of the shoreline behind the beach, they had set up a correctly scaled planetarium with each planet in our solar system to scale at the correct distance from its neighbour. The size of each of the solar system’s planets was also proportionally correlated. Paal was impressed.
At the drop Zone, Paal met and befriended a thirty-one-year-old American skydiving professional, free flyer and cameraman, who was in attendance along with his colleagues Dave and Wendy. Three famous “Flyboyz” who were attending the Boogie coaching and organised the free-flying lifts. Eli (Eloy) Thompson was born on 11 July 1973 in Illinois, USA. At nineteen, he started skydiving at a Parachute drop zone in Arizona, USA, called Eloy, hence his nickname, and he never looked back.
He was incredibly gifted and specialised in extreme skydiving and skydiving filmography. Paal says, “The air was his natural element, like a fish in water”. Along with a group of friends who named themselves’s “Flyboyz”, he had more or less expanded the art of free-flying. Eli also BASE jumped and knew several of Paals Norwegian friends. Paal thought it would be fun to have some photos of his jumps and decided to humbly ask if Eli could take pictures of him during freefall. To this day, those perfect images from the great leaps they had together are cherished possessions.
Free-flying jumps were performed over the following three days while Patrick performed formation jumps. Eli, the fantastic American photographer, was present during several of these jumps and shot great images. One afternoon, after their last lift of the day, they passed another group of extreme free-flying jumpers. They had produced a DVD of earlier wild jumps, including BASE jumps which looked very professional. Paal and Patrick decided to buy a copy.
When they arrived back at their B&B, they met an affluent, well-educated, middle-class Thai family consisting of a couple with their daughter and grandmother. They spoke good English and were curious as to what was going on at the airport. As they were explaining the concept of skydiving to the family, Patrick suddenly remembered that they had bought a DVD from the event. The TV and DVD player in the B&B reception area were mounted high up on the wall, so Patrick pulled a chair over to reach it and then pressed the play button.
As he sat next to the grandmother, the filmmakers’ names rolled across the screen to upbeat music. However, once the introduction finished, the film started. One of the extreme skydivers having explicit sex with two women covered the TV screen. It was nothing less than hardcore porn. Paal, leaning against the door frame, started laughing. Patrick, on the hand, jumped to his feet, his face red as a beetroot as he dragged the chair back below the TV. He was so flustered that he fell off the chair while trying to stop the video.
By the time he was back up on the chair, the film had continued past the porn and showed the skydiver fully dressed on his way on board the jump plane. The rest of the film was excellent and depicted every type of skydiving you could imagen. Patrick’s colour slowly returned to normal, and grandma probably never forgot her first skydiving movie.
On 16 March, Paal boarded the C-130 with Eli, the American photographer, for a high-altitude jump from sixteen thousand feet for the third lift that day. It was Paals, one hundred and sixty-ninth skydive and would be the last jump Eli would photograph Paal. If you are superstitious, thirteen squared could well be a premonitory number. He decided to try for some spectacular acrobatic pictures. Eloy was wearing a weight belt as he was not as heavy as Paal. They jumped out together, and Paal immediately went into a vertical headstand. Eli standing under, looking upward, was filming.
Paal then spun into an upright standing position before turning into a headstand again. At the time, his freefalling speed was probably between two hundred and fifty and two hundred and seventy kilometres per hour. He knew he was pushing the limits of both his rig and himself but was caught up in the moment and wanted some fantastic pictures. Modern Acrobatic parachutes have Velcro strips that enclose the pilot chute pouch and hinder it from self-releasing at the wrong moment. Paal’s Saber 190 chute did not have this added protection, just a bungee cord squeezing the pouch opening with the bean bag protruding. When his body was horizontal, flipping towards the next upright standing position, he suddenly saw his pilot chute fly past him between his chest and arm.
This occurred at an altitude of around ten or twelve thousand feet. Instinctively, he moved his arm under the pilot chute’s bridle cord and pressed it towards his body. After that split-second decision, he remembers nothing before coming to himself at around three thousand feet. His helmet camera and digital altimeter were gone, ripped off his helmet by the extreme G force. Looking up, confused, bloody from a nose bleed and in incredible pain in his upper body, he saw his rectangular canopy split entirely in two down the middle cell. He could see the blue sky between the two sections. It was flapping in two separate parts but still held its configuration.
Although his vision was blurry, he could see blood everywhere. Dangling under the remains of his stricken chute, he circled clockwise slowly to the right, approaching the ocean below, something the canopy had been doing from about eleven thousand feet altitude. In shock, still dazed from the Nine G’s (Gravities) to which he had just exposed his body while in a horizontal position (His head, including the helmet’s weight, had suffered a side force equivalent to close to one hundred kilos if not more), he tried to move.
The movement set off excruciating pain to his whole body, but he knew he had to try and steer towards the beach; otherwise, he would likely drown. With all the energy he could muster, he grabbed hold of the left toggle, and thankfully, the broken chute responded, and he drifted towards land. He slammed to the sand thirty or forty meters back from the high tide mark and just laid there. Several jumpers, including Michel Van Beirs and Eli, immediately ran toward him to help.
The first words Eli exclaimed were, “Man, that was one hell of a close call”. To start with, the pain in his cracked neck vertebrae was so bad that he could not move. It was his one-hundred-and-thirteenth jump, and he had learnt another valuable lesson. Don’t be cocky, and respect your limitations. It was probably the closest he had ever come to dying, but he was alive, although the pain was so bad that he initially, at times, wished he wasn’t. He was glad he had saved his arm, though. It could have been torn off or hindered his canopy opening if he had not managed to move it inside the pilot bridle loop.
In addition, he would definitely have drowned if he had not regained consciousness. There was obviously no more jumping for him on that Boogie, but he still had to get his motorcycle home. He asked Patrick to visit a pharmacy and told him to buy large packets of Voltaren anti-inflammatory and painkiller tablets. After taking a double dose of both, he climbed onto the bike and started a prolonged and painful homeward-bound struggle. It would generally take around seven hours, but he used nearly twice that under the circumstances.
Paal threw away the split destroyed canopy but kept the rig. He had plenty of time to buy a new one as he knew it would be a while before he could jump again. It would also take months before managing to fall asleep on a mattress. The excruciating pain returned to his neck and shoulders every time he tried. He ended up sleeping on wooden bed slats that he laid on the bedroom floor, and when offshore wooden slats were placed on top of the bunks mattress.
Tragically Eli Thompson died on 28 August 2009 in Lauterbrunnen, Bern, Swiss Alps, while performing a wingsuit proximity-flying jump stunt from a helicopter. They were filming for Red Bull when he hit the side of the mountain. Eli left behind a legacy that has forever changed skydiving and extreme air sports. His ideas and vision made him part of skydiving history and earned him multiple World Championships and World Records, accomplishing over thirteen thousand skydives and numerous BASE jumps. Like Tor Alex Kappfjell, Eli deeply touched and inspired many people throughout his exceptionally intense, albeit shortened, life.
Eli was part of the 1996–2000 world champion skydiving team, the Flyboyz. Thompson hosted thirty episodes of Stunt Junkies on the Discovery Channel between 2006 and 2007. From 2001 until his death, he was a professional Red Bull athlete. He is also known for his accomplishments in the films; Species 1995, Breakdown 1997, and as an aerial stuntman in Austin Powers Goldmember 2002, amongst many other feats. The week following his accident and his second meeting at Lodge Pattaya West Winds, he attended a Masonic Lodge in Bangkok. Although the practices and traditions were similar, he knew few of their members and thoroughly enjoyed meeting new brothers.
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