With the aid of duct tape and a helping hand, 50-year-old Pascale Honore found herself riding the waves off of Western Australia’s rugged coast. What made the event so extraordinary was that Honore could not walk. In fact, the Elliston resident was paralyzed after a car accident in 1995 caused severe damage to her spinal cord. Honore was driving home with a friend when a nearly fatal mistake overturned the vehicle. While her friend only caught a bruise, Honore was launched out the driver’s side window and dashed on her back against rocks.

“I just remember waking up with the guy’s head above me and he said, ‘You’ve had a car accident and you’ll be in a wheelchair for the rest of your life,’” Honore told The Sunday Mail. “He was the surgeon, but I didn’t know that at the time. I just remember thinking, `What are you on about?'”

Honore spent the next half year in rehabilitation and then determined to live her life, with or without the use of her legs. She raised two sons who loved the water and became avid surfers. Honore’s pride for her boys soon led to the frustration that she could not join them on the waves. Then one of her son’s friends, professional diver Tyron Swan, had an idea.

“Yeah, I reckon I could surf with Pascale on my back,” Swan said, recalling when he first thought up the plan.

The idea was simple, although neither Swan nor Honore knew how to put it in action. Safety concerns were the top priority. Swan had to support the entirety of Honore’s weight while swimming and surfing, and had to deal with any contingencies that would occur. He also had to devise a way to carry his friend’s mother in a way that freed up his arms and legs. The two began practicing carefully in flat water and eventually headed out for their first wave last December.

“I just remember looking up and seeing the colors in the wave, hearing that sound […] it was all over too soon,” Honore said.

Now the strangely-matched pair of surfers regularly go out for waves, most recently at popular tourist destination Kalbarri in Western Australia.

Video of Honore and Swan surfing can be seen below:

http://youtu.be/q1gvkTcxkq0

Image screenshot of video by NewChannel145 on YouTube