Breaking: Rogue Boat Plows Through Steamer Lane, Capsizes With Family Of Six Onboard

A family of six, two parents and four kids, came close to disaster at Steamer Lane, Santa Cruz this afternoon, as a rogue boat plowed through the lineup, got caught in the biggest set of the day, and capsized in a haunting sorta way that makes you wince just watching the footage. The boat, as it pitched and rolled, flung the family into the water and narrowly missed running over surfers.

Fortuitously, Stab writer Holden Trnka, fresh off a red-eye from Hawaii covering the Pipe Challenger, was paddling out to wash off the travel. But he didn’t make it far. The maritime missile found him before he could make it out the back. He ended up grabbing one of the kids, pulled her onto his board, and managed to keep her from sinking. He picks up the story from there:

“The biggest set of the day came through, and I’m paddling out between Middle Peak and the Slot, up against the cliff, and this 15ft panga boat starts humming it around the corner,” he says.  “The biggest set of the day was still stacking, and it tries to shoot the gap between two Middle Peak sets. It ends up riding down the face of a wave, going full speed, and pokes a nose and flips over. There were 30-40 people in the water.” 

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“It was so close to hitting multiple surfers,” Holden continues. “It woulda killed somebody if it ran them over. The boat was flipped over, and the clean up sets were still rolling through. We were all basically panicking, like, who was in the boat? Where are they? How can we grab them? Is everybody ok?” 

Turns out, there were six people in the boat, two parents, four kids, all between 4 and 10, now scattered in the water, getting mowed down by set waves, each one separated from the others.

“We all sprint paddled over,” says Holden. “I grabbed one of the kids and put her on my board. She was screaming for her mum and dad, crying, saying she wants to go home. It was super traumatic.” 

“We didn’t know if all the kids were all ok and had been accounted for. The boat had flipped over, and there was just debris and shit from the boat all over the lineup. But we eventually paddled them over and got the whole family onto a coast guard boat.” 

Life vests were on all the kids, but neither parent had one, and the mother didn’t appear to be a strong swimmer. Of them all, though, the father was in the worst shape.

“All the kids were ok,” says Holden. “But the dad had this crazy gash on his head, and his pants had been completely blown off. He had no pants on, this crazy gash on his head, and he was throwing up off the side of the boat, just saying, ‘I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.’”

A strange spectacle, one that seems too reckless to be the work of any boat captain in their right mind, with the responsibility of an entire family riding on their judgment. Whether alcohol was a factor remains unknown, but Holden reports seeing Modelo cans floating across the lineup after the boat went under. 

“It was just cool to see all the surfers immediately rally together for the rescue,” Holden finishes. “If this had happened in a place where there weren’t any surfers, who knows, they probably would have drowned.”