Stranded kite surfer survives sharks' attack

Moscow: A kite surfing champion from Poland became stranded for 40 hours on the Red Sea and fought off an attack by sharks with a knife.

Janek Lisewski, 42, attempted to kite surf a 200 km distance between Egypt and Saudi Arabia. He was on his two thirds of the trip, when the wind went dead and the deflated kite plunged into the sea.

He waited for about two hours for the wind to return and then sent a call of distress, but it took 40 hours before Saudi Arabian coast guards discovered and rescued him.

During this time, which he survived on energy drinks and two energy bars he had, Lisewski was attacked by sharks, but fended them off with a knife.

"I was stabbing them in the eyes, the nose, the gills," he told Poland's PAP agency.

Last year Lisewski became the first kite surfer in history to cross the Baltic Sea as he surfed from Poland to Sweden.