Just when you thought it was safe to go kitesurfing in the Red Sea, Polish kitesurfer Jan Lisewski got stranded in the middle of it — without any winds — and allegedly fought off eleven sharks with a knife. According to Digital Journal and Reuters, this bout occurred during the second night of a 40-hour ordeal at sea, when Lisewski’s attempt at sailing straight across the Red Sea from El Gouna, Egypt to Duba, Saudi Arabia had fallen into doldrums. He waited for two nights to be rescued, the second of which he drifted into a reef, where sharks were supposedly attracted to the colors of his kite, so he claimed. (Sharks are actually color blind.)
“They attacked me through my kite, which must’ve also attracted them because of its color,” Lisewski told the Polish Press Agency. Allegedly there were eleven sharks that attacked him and his craft, but thankfully he had a knife with him — something he hadn’t intended to bring with him until his brother Piotr suggested it.
“I stabbed them in the eyes, nose and gills,” Lisewski said. “The fight, which I’ve miraculously survived, took whole night. By the morning, they were gone.”
Lisewski, who is no stranger to long-distance kitesurfing — he’s the first to kitesurf across the Baltic Sea from Poland to Sweden — was rescued by the Saudi Arabian coast guard unscathed, save for exhaustion and dehydration. Whether or not the eleven shark battle was exaggerated or actual fact can not be determined, but as they say, history is written by the winners.
