Californian surfer dead after snapping neck at Teahupoo

“We are all in shock from this accident.”

Hell of a joint Teahupoo, the famously lethal joint at the end of the road, although, as fate would play it, only two souls have split this coil there, local Brice Taerea in 2000 and, now, a fifty-six-year-old and yet to be ID’d Californian surfer. 

The various news sources in French Polynesia say the man hit the reef and busted two vertebrae in his neck in a wipeout. Another surfer resuscitated the man on site before he was taken to the nearby Taravao Hozzy and, later, to the more sophisticated CHPF (Centre Hospitalier de la Polynésie Française) as he hovered ‘tween life and death.

Reports say the rescue was made “more complex by the language barrier,” according to Taiarapu-Ouest fire chief Haamoe Hoata, noting that the victim and some of his relatives did not speak any French.

Recent near-death episodes there include the teenage photographer Byron Mclouhglin, who was shooting the action from an inflatable bodyboard a couple of years back and was found face down in the water by American photographer Ryan Craig and Tahitian bodyboarder Angelo Faraire.

Mcloughlin had blue lips and foam pouring out of his mouth but survived in what you might call a miracle.

And two weeks back, one of the best in the game out at Teahupoo, Matahi Drollet, almost died after he was towed into one of those unfathomable Teahupoo bombs, wrangling everything thrown at him inside the tube only to come within centimetres of colliding with a tourist boat in the channel. 

“The closest I’ve been to end my surfing journey,” Matahi wrote. “Had to choose between the boat or the lip… survival mode made me grab the rail and do a cutback in the explosion to avoid hitting the boat.” 

Worst wipeout survived at the joint goes to Nicky Porcella and his gruesome ass fall into a pitching from hell in 2015.