STORY SUMMARY>>>
It's a ride Jim Rawlinson will never forget.
Rawlinson, 68, was catching waves at the point in Hanalei Bay, Kauai Monday at about 4 p.m. when as quick as greased lightning his peaceful afternoon turned into every surfer's nightmare.
"All of a sudden I felt this strike on the back of my board and it lifted me kind of up in the air," he said. Rawlinson's surfboard had just been attacked by a large tiger shark.
As he slid backwards what happened next is as frightening as it is unimaginable. Rawlinson ended up on the back of the ocean's most feared predator.
"I was onto the shark's back...anywhere from about five to ten seconds. It was so strange that everything was so slow and yet again so fast."
Rawlinson credits his escape from the large, toothy fish on his ability to stay calm. As he straddled the fish, he released his surf leash from around his leg and slowly slid off.
"About that time my board was free floating around so I swam over and got it and surfed for another 45 minutes or so."
Marine biologist Terry Lilley was shooting underwater video just a few yards from Rawlinson when noticed a group of turtles scatter just moments before Rawlinson's board was bitten.
Lilley believes one of the turtles swam too close to the surfer while trying to get away. "it's just purely accidental and then when it finds out it's not the turtle then it releases and splits and goes away," he said.
After measuring a bite mark on the tail of Rawlinson's surfboard Lilley estimated the tiger shark was 14 feet long, or roughly the size of a mid-size sedan.
"Every inch of the base of the tooth represents about a ten foot long shark," said Lilley. "That tooth on the top where it went into the board is about an inch and a quarter in length. So it roughly put it at about a fourteen foot shark."
Rawlinson's board was attacked about five miles from where Bethany Hamilton lost her arm while surfing a break called Tunnels in October of 2003.
"I can empathize and understand what she might of gone through," he said, "but I was real fortunate I didn't lose a limb or anything serious happen to me."
Lilley, who shoots underwater video for the conservation group Save Our Seas, has been diving with sharks for forty years. He says he has never really felt threatened when swimming next to the creatures.
"People think of sharks as these mean creatures, they're actually not. They're very gentle; they're very calm."
Rawlinson described his encounter with the shark as an almost spiritual experience. He says he now feels a strange connection to the animal.
"There was a blessing of some sort," he said. "I don't know what made it all work out real good but I didn't get a scratch."
Have a news tip? Contact Andrew Pereira at 368-7273.
