VOLUSIA COUNTY, Fla. (WESH) – A Florida surfer who has spent decades riding the waves was bitten by a shark for the first time, but far from being scared, he created a makeshift tourniquet and drove himself to the hospital.
Charley Hajek, the owner of Gnarly Charley Surf Series, thought he had seen and experienced it all. He’s helped many people out of the water after shark bites.
“I’ve been stung by some nasty jellyfish, box jellyfish,” Hajek said. “But, yeah, various things – lots of surfboard accidents.”
But on Sunday morning, the longtime surfer was himself bitten by a shark for the first time. He says he was out surfing when he accidentally stepped on the shark.
“By the time I even thought twice about it, it just ‘bam!’ It bit me up,” Hajek said. “Man, I felt like I stepped my foot on a light socket.”
Hajek was bitten twice – on the bottom of his left foot and on the outside of his left ankle. He made it out of the water and onto the beach, where he could assess just how bad his wounds were.
“I take that first step on the beach, and all those little teeth, you could see them,” he said. “Those are perfect little slices of my leg everywhere, and it just opened up like a flower and blew blood out everywhere. Man, it was so gnarly.”
Hajek grabbed the leash of his surfboard and wrapped it around his leg a few times, crafting a makeshift tourniquet, before he drove himself to the hospital. He received stitches and was sent home.
Like many surfers, Hajek says this incident is not enough to keep him out of the water.
“I’m anxious to get back out there,” he said.
What he’s most bummed about is that he broke his 148-day surfing streak, but once the stitches are out, he has all the time in the world to meet and surpass that streak.
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