Photo: Jamie O’Brien // YouTube
Last week we saw perhaps the biggest floater ever attempted. A 75-foot passenger craft lost control in high surf in Honolulu, and ended up riding a wave into shore.
“They were coming in trying to beat this wave,” surf filmmaker Ramon Brockington told The Associated Press. “And the boat didn’t have enough power to get in front of this wave. So what happened was a wave ended up picking up the boat, and the captain basically lost all steering whatsoever.”
Of course, Pipeline specialist and YouTuber Jamie O’Brien makes it his business to be involved in whatever surfing happens on Oahu, so it only made sense for him to check out the aftermath. “We are on our way to Ala Moana Bowls, but we saw a video online of a boat crashing on the reef,” he explained at the top of his most recent video. JOB and company took a quick detour to check it out, and found the wreckage still being thrashed on the reef.
From there, O’Brien gave a local’s-eye view of the wreckage. “That’s just how big the waves are today,” he summed up, gazing upon the stranded hulk. “The wave closed out the channel, the boat rode it down and then did a big floater for all the boys. Lucky no one got hurt, because that could have been really bad. Now there’s probably a big gash in the reef… Let’s head over to Bowls.”
