Recent large swells at Teahupoo in Tahiti produced scores of spectacular wipeouts, but the worst--and saddest--involved a Brazilian photographer on a boat that was nearly swamped by a giant wave. Camila Neves, who can be seen in the middle of the green boat in the accompanying
video, tumbled backward and slammed into the bottom of the
vessel when it became vertical as its captain tried to motor over
the building swell.
I emailed Neves on Monday and received a response, from someone else, saying that she remained hospitalized in Papaeete with three broken vertebras. Her accident presumably happened after the epic May 15 swell.
The incident received very little publicity and the Google-translated Tahiti Infos story, which claimed the accompanying footage as exclusive, is jumbled and difficult to understand.
It did, however, quote Stephané Bernardin, who captured the accident footage from a different boat.
Bernardin said: "We were at the end of the bowl with a boat next to us who almost got eaten by the wave…. I've seen similar episodes on the [Internet], but there live was the first time. Impressive."
Some in the big-wave surfing industry might have anticipated an accident like this, because Teahupoo is circus-like during a big swell. Photo boats and jetskis jockey for prime angles to shoot face-to-face with gargantuan barrels.
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