Wave Sweeps Away Spectators on A Beach

[Breakaway]

I cant embed the video as its not YouTube.

Kevin

https://www.accuweather.com/en/weath...ountry_code=US

[David W Pratt]

One would think that people in Hawaii would be smarter around surf.

[bluedog225]

Swept away? Seems like they got wet.

[John Smith]

My friend and I, many years ago, were out on the end of a jetty at Manasquan Beach. We see this HUGE WAVE coming and shove him in between to rocks. I can't find a place to 'hide'. Wave swept me up. I held my breath for what seemed like forever but was really only 20 or 30 seconds. It set me down on the beach rather gently. I was all scraped up and bleeding in many places, none of which I felt.

My friend was out of the jetty frantically looking for me. Finally heard me yelling his name.

Needless to say, we've never walked out on a jetty since.

[skuthorp]

Rock fishermen get drowned like that on a regular basis here. Many are recent migrants with little experience of the sea.

[robm]

One would think that people in Hawaii would be smarter around surf.

Tourists?

It happens in Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia, too.

[Jim Bow]

Oregon loses 3 or 4 beach visitors a year that way. A lot of times they climb on old driftwood logs, a wave undermines the log, it rolls and crushes them.
Native Oregonians know better.

[JimD]

I still have the souvenir Eddie Aikau shirt from the last time it was held. The beach in places is very flat so a big wave sweeps up a long way. It looks like a lot of those people were even standing in front of a temporary fence that they should have been behind and they took the fence down with them when the water washed them into it.

[Breakaway]

Swept away? Seems like they got wet.

Didn't watch the video til the end, didja?
The lifeguards are shown running to catch people swept out.

Kevin

[Nicholas Carey]

That was "The Eddy", big, big surf competition. And it's an invitational — the surfers themselves vote on who should be invited. It hasn't been held since 2016, and it was predicted that the swell would be 30–40 feet, so the breakers would be considerably higher.

It's a big deal in Hawaii.

https://www.theeddieaikau.com/

Local lifeguard won the 2023 Eddie. This is the winner on one of his rides:



Eddie Aikau was a famous surfer, lost at sea on the Hawaiian blue-water sailing canoe Hōkūleʻa — I remember her stopping in Seattle at the Center for Wooden Boats sometime in the mid-90s.

[Gotta love that crab-claw rig]



From Wikipedia:

When the Polynesian Voyaging Society announced it was seeking volunteers for a journey of rediscovery aboard its double-hulled replica canoe Hokule'a, Eddie leaped at the chance. The Hokule'a trip was designed to retrace the ancient Polynesian migration passage between Hawaii and the Tahitian chain -- 2,400 miles south of Honolulu. It had done a similar trip in 1976, accompanied by backup vessels; this time it would go alone. Hokule'a sailed out of the Magic Island dock on the evening of March 16, 1978, straight into a strong northeast tradewind. By midnight, tracking down the rough Molokai Channel, the canoe developed a leak in the starboard hull and eventually capsized. The crew hung on and hoped for a quick rescue, but by morning they were locked into a southerly flowing current and still being smashed by the tradewind. Aikau insisted on paddling for help -- his target being the island of Lanai, 12 miles to the east -- and at 10:30 a.m., Captain David Lyman relented. Aikau made a leash of nylon rope for his big rescue board and paddled off, saying: "Don't worry, I can do it. I can get to land." At 8:27 p.m., a Hawaiian Air jet pilot saw the canoe's flares and strobe lights and requested aid; by midnight, most of the crew was on its way back to Honolulu.

Eddie Aikau was never found. A memorial was mounted at Waimea Bay Beach Park, and the famous invite-only Bay event held in his name waits each winter for the kind of surf he made his own. Source: Surfline, Nick Carroll, October 2000.

[Hugh MacD]

Oregon loses 3 or 4 beach visitors a year that way. A lot of times they climb on old driftwood logs, a wave undermines the log, it rolls and crushes them.
Native Oregonians know better.

Sneakers can be crazy powerful. I was hiking on Cape Kiwanda in my teens and watched the water pull back, exposing the rocks below. I started backpedalling immediately and got almost to the treeline when the wave hit, shaking the entire point and putting me under green water for a few seconds. I played "limpet" with some pockets in the rock to keep from being pulled back in. I was probably eighty to a hundred feet up at that point. I was looking down the bowl shown in this google image (hope it dhows up!)
https://www.google.com/maps/search/c.../data=!3m1!1e3

[Nicholas Carey]

Oregon loses 3 or 4 beach visitors a year that way. A lot of times they climb on old driftwood logs, a wave undermines the log, it rolls and crushes them.
Native Oregonians know better.

A family friend disappeared on a beach in Oregon back in the 1970s.

They found his car with all his camping gear and clothes in it at a beach. Cops said it was suicide, but I always thought he went for a beach hike and either got trapped by the tide and drowned, or got crushed by a log like you said: Bruce did not seem like the suicide type.

[epoxyboy]

Swept away? Seems like they got wet.

Hard to tell, with that damn caption plastered over half the video!

Pete

[JayInOz]

Rock fishermen get drowned like that on a regular basis here. Many are recent migrants with little experience of the sea.

Nearly forty drownings in Oz so far this summer. Three of the most recent were deaths of a parent drowned while trying to rescue one of their kids from a rip. To add to the tragedy all three kids survived without help from the parent who could have stayed dry and lived.

[J.Madison]

Lots of bumper stickers in Hawaii stating "Eddie would go."

[Todd D]

People get swept out by waves every few years here on the Schoodic Penninsula where there is a sloping granite shore. Tourists go out onto the "wet" rocks to get a closer look at the surf with predictable results. There are no lifeguards and the water is cold so those swept out often die.

[bluedog225]

I stand corrected. Swept away.

[sp_clark]

People get swept out by waves every few years here on the Schoodic Penninsula where there is a sloping granite shore. Tourists go out onto the "wet" rocks to get a closer look at the surf with predictable results.

Happens every so often in Chicago too, that inland lake on the east side fools some into thinking it's just like the lake they swam in as a kid.

https://patch.com/illinois/chicago/m...-lake-michigan

https://www.cnn.com/videos/weather/2...ig-weather.cnn

https://ezinearticles.com/?The-Day-a...cago&id=172583

[David G]

Lots of bumper stickers in Hawaii stating "Eddie would go."

One of the h.s. buddies I surfed with back in the 60's now has that one on his car in Astoria. Being ironic. Because Oregon surf rarely attains any of the size that phrase is urging people to face. And because every Hawaiian surfer who visited here promptly declared the water too cold to surf in.