“He Just Went Right For The Pack. I Thought He Was Going To Come Back Around And Finish Us Off”

Yesterday, as you’re probably aware, a maritime missile launched through the Lowers lineup in the form of a rogue sports boat. 

…

Yep. 

Cruising at a blithe 40 mph (65 km/h), it ripped through a pack of surfers, narrowly avoiding the inside stragglers, who, in turn, had to execute evasive, life preserving manoeuvres.

The footage, almost comically surreal, was captured by Surfline, and shows the rogue vessel charging across the screen, dwarfing the ant-like surfers. If you happened to be leisurely checking the waves while at work, you might’ve wondered if you’d accidentally swapped your morning chocolates for the psychedelic variety.

A miracle no one’s in a body bag.

So what actually happened? Well, the video provides a rather public script for the incident, with plenty of witnesses. We tracked down one of them, a gent named Eric, who gave us his rendition of the events.

“I was paddling out, and when I got about halfway out there, I noticed, from the left-hand side of my vision, the boat,” recalls Eric. “He was coming from out at sea, but he was kinda parallel with the beach, coming from way out in the open ocean. And I was like, ‘Whoa.’”

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“At first, I thought he might be trying to scare off a shark or warn us about one, or maybe he had a buddy in the lineup and it was a bad joke. But then he just never let off the throttle.”

Eric remembers surfers scrambling, splashing, and yelling at the boat, half in panic, mostly in fury, as it barrelled through.

“He just went right for the pack,” Eric continues. “I don’t know if he had a heart attack, or if he was just not all there, but when he motored through, he didn’t look at anybody. It looked like he was heading for the beach, but after he went through the crowd, he veered back out to the open ocean. Totally bizarre, like he was on autopilot or something. He didn’t look back, didn’t turn to say sorry.”

Very, very strange. But what’s even weirder, according to Eric, is that there were two others in the back of the boat, just lounging. Unmoved and expressionless, not a flicker of recognition for the absurdity at hand.

Eric paddled back out to Lowers today, poking around for answers.

“Someone said he was an older guy, and he’d just had a glass of wine, and he was completely clueless. Apparently, some people recognised the boat, and went to the owners house to investigate, but he wasn’t home. It’s just super weird.” 

As of now, there’s still no word on the man or his mannequin crew.

“Man, when he was heading back out to sea, I thought he was going to come back around and finish us off, you know? I thought he might’ve been a San O long boarder that had a vendetta. Just decades long hatred,” says Eric. “Or, I thought maybe some guy burned him at Lowers once, and he was coming back for revenge.” 

All within the realm of possibility. More as we hear it.