Tim Bonython trapped under boat as 10-foot swell
threatens to steal him to the heavens!
If you were sunning yourself on the great bluffs near
Bells yesterday, you would’ve been privy to quite a show.
A helicopter flying hither and yon shucking a human being and then
landing on the beach to pick him up, jetskis in the water,
cameramen everywhere.
The wingsuit pilot Rex Pemberton was
being filmed for a documentary for Outside magazine,
sponsored by Jeep, his stunt being he’d jump out of a chopper, land
on a wave on a little tow-board, drop his parachute, and surf
it to the beach.
It all came unstuck, however, and not in the manner in which
you’d expect (Rex’s chute doesn’t open, disappears into the ocean).
In a growing swell, and with all eyes on the little speck hurtling
towards earth, the camera boat was caught inside by a ten-foot set.
One man seriously hurt; others say they nearly drowned.
Tim Bonython, whom you know as the filmmaker who
never misses a swell from Shipsterns to The Right to
Teahupoo, was in the boat when it was hit. I called
him this morning at his hotel room in Torquay to discuss. It didn’t
matter that it was early. Tim’d been up since four am, reliving
what happened, the existential horror of being in an upside down
boat, completely unprepared for disaster.
What happened? Well, first, says Tim, you’ve gotta remember this
ain’t Shipsterns or The Right or even Teahupoo where there’s a
semblance of a channel even on monster days. Here, a couple of
beaches up from Bells, a good set will take out the bay.
“And so we’re watching the jump,” says Tim, “and I felt like
everyone was looking at him and not the surf. Five minutes before
I’d told the captain to keep an eye on the ocean. It was a rising
swell and I’d seen a few sets come through. When the first set came
through, Rex was literally twenty seconds from landing on
the ocean. The first wave was big, the second… we got hit.
Everyone said, hold on, this is it! This is serious! Hold onto
your cameras!
“I bent down and barelegged my camera, behind the console,
behind the captain’s legs. I could feel the boat going
up, up, up, up, up, up, and feel us airborne. Then I looked up
and I could see the front of the boat going over the top of
us. Everything was falling backwards and… boom… suddenly
I’m underneath the boat thinking, oh fucking god, this is not
where I want to be. I was in the chassis of the boat, trying
to feel my way out. I couldn’t fucking get out. And this is where I
fucked, where I made an important mistake. My wetsuit was down
around my waist, I had a t-shirt, shirt, Patagonia down jacket, a
life vest and a wind jacket. All that stuff was pulling me
up and I had to swim… down. My jacket’s filled with the
water, my wetsuit is filing up. It took me around fifteen seconds
to get out but it felt like eternity.
“I came up and there was another set. I heard someone say,
Get away from the boat! I swim to the left and just
avoided it. I saw the captain putting his hand up, blood
coming out of his head, trying to grab the boat to stabilise
himself. He was close to maybe going under and not being able to
swim, his brain was telling him to hold onto
something.
“Another wave came. I didn’t know which way to go. I called for
help. I started to go into panic mode. Do I get rid of my shit
on me? I was really in a mess. I tell ya, it was the most
horrific 20 minutes of my life.”
Tim was eventually picked up and deposited on the beach.
“I was shaking with shock. That was like nothing I’ve ever
experienced,” says Tim. “I’d never had the shit hit the fan like
that.”
Want irony?
All those cameras and no one got the shot of the boat being hit,
save for a drone.
“They were looking around, looking for the boat, they they
realised, oh my god, it’s upside-down! There’s people and shit
everywhere!”
Tim, of course, is a professional in the game. As were talking
his masters came to pick him up for a re-shoot, this time using
GoPro cameras.
