BASE Jumping at St George's Bay Symi

St George’s Bay, Symi, is currently hosting the Pro BASE Jumping World Championships, a form of extreme sport for which St George’s sheer cliff is ideally suited.  For those who don’t know what this entails, in a nutshell it involves parachuting off tall stationary objects such as bridges, steeples and cliffs while aiming to hit a specific target for which points are awarded. Unlike hang-gliding, the parachutes are not steerable and the jumpers have little directional control.  On Sunday one of the participants had an accident which according to various sources may have been caused by opening his parachute to early or being caught by a fluke gust of wind.  Whatever the cause, the outcome was that he was blown into the cliff face where, luckily, his parachute snagged, saving him from serious and possibly fatal injury.  Once it was established that his injuries were not actually life-threatening, while attempts were made to effect his rescue, the scheduled events continued.  In the meantime the Super Puma that is used for medical emergencies arrived.  This spent several hours circling over the area and the neighbouring  Pedi valley – an unusual sight at a time of year when such activity is usually associated with rich megayachties showing off their mini helicopters The injured man was eventually brought down the cliff in the early evening with shoulder and arm injuries and after being stabilized by Symi’s medical team was casevaced to Rhodes. 

On a less dramatic note, Symi’s long awaited new bus has arrived.  It is bright yellow and was driven here from Belgium.  It is not in use yet but can be admired at the kiosk by the bus stop.  There will be a photograph tomorrow.

Have a good week.

Regards,

Adriana