SAN DIEGO — With powerful waves slamming the California coast, passengers on a local whale watching tour got a lot more than they bargained for.
The boat they were on had to fight its way back to shore, and not everyone on board was ready to deal with the strong surf.
CBS 8 has the video recorded from shore as onlookers gathered on the Mission Beach jetty Thursday while the boat was knocked around in the surf zone, leaning pretty far to the side at times.
“We kind of slammed into the side and then people were like, ‘Oh man!’” said Lawrence Vulis, a passenger aboard the boat. “Where the boat kind of like goes to the side, that’s probably where we got slammed, we went to the left of the boat and that’s where we kind of got knocked up a little bit.”
His brother was in town visiting, so they set out on an ocean tour with Legacy Whale Watch. After a couple hours at sea, it was time to come back in through the channel to Mission Bay.
“We came in, sort of rode the back of the wave, but the waves were coming in really fast, I guess at some point we ended up on what I felt was the breaking side of the wave,” said Vulis. “One of the crew members was like, ‘Alright, everyone inside, take a seat, you know, things are getting a little more serious here.’”
As water crashed over the stern of the boat, everyone rushed inside the cabin for safety.
“When we slammed inside, some people shouldn’t have been standing like me,” Vulis said laughingly. “We went to the side and were like, ‘Oh, that’s scary, that shouldn’t happen again.’ And then we all sat down.”
According to Vulis, the mood among the passengers was split.
“Some people were like, ‘This is a fun Disney ride right now or a fun Universal Studios ride,’ and some people were like, ‘This is not funny,’” recalled Vulis. “Some people were crying on the boat, they were like, ‘Oh man, this is so crazy.’”
They eventually made it past the breaking surf and when the boat finally docked, everyone gave the captain a round of applause.
“The captain did a really great job keeping control of the boat, working in really rough conditions. No one could know they’d be that rough as we’d be coming in,” said Vulis. “I would totally go out with them again, go out to see some whales, some dolphins and the great marine life we have here in San Diego.”
CBS 8 called and visited Legacy Whale Watch, but no one was available to comment.
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