The swells involved may not have been the kind of 20- to 30-foot bashers that pummel fear into boaters confronting them at open sea. But the moderately whipped waves captured in a drone video shot at New Jersey’s Island Beach State Park recently do provide an idea of how helpless ships become when trapped in the crosshairs of the ocean’s surging power.
A drone pilot identified as SuazzOn uploaded the video of the 72-ton scallop trawler called the Bear caught between the local beach and storm-roiled waves that relentlessly battered the boat’s side over the weekend. Built in 1984, the craft’s hull descends eight feet below the deck – easily deep enough to have left the vessel aground and immobilized when the combination of howling wind and relentless surf bashed up on the sandbar. Its parallel position to the beach exposed the ship to endless incoming breakers – trapping it where it was, and unable to do anything else but suffer the thumping for over…
