Video: Whale Drags Windsurfer Underwater

Windsurfers may do all their business above the ocean’s surface, but that doesn’t mean they can’t have run-ins with creatures from below. Fifty-five-year-old Jason Breen learned this firsthand while out windsurfing off the Sydney suburb of Mona Vale. 

Video taken by a bystander showed the stunning moment when Breen collided with a breaching whale. Breen and his friend Tom, who was with him during the incident, are both fine. “I was out riding with him. He was all good,” Tom noted. “Just a broken wing leash and maybe needs a new set of undies.”

Breen captured the whole encounter on his GoPro. In an interview with Windsurfing.TV after the incident, he admitted he was sure his time was up. 

“To my right-hand side, I just saw a whale out of nowhere stick its head up. And then it just got further and further out of the water and about when it was on top of me, I just thought, ‘I’m in trouble here. This is not good.’ And it literally just landed straight on top of me,” he recounted. “It did drag me down sort of 20 to 30 feet, and the only thing that saved me was my leash. The webbing completely ripped out. And if it didn’t, I probably wouldn’t be here. It was only the snap of that leg rope that actually saved me.”

It turns out it was a baby whale that still had the strength to overpower him. “It was a big calf,” he told 9News. “If it had barnacles I would have been ripped apart because the whale’s body was beside me the whole time.”

Talk about a close call.