After 4 Years, Surfer’s Lost Board Washes Ashore

A long journey for a sturdy surfboard

Surfboard
One surfboard's strange odyssey.
Roman Raizen/Unsplash

One day in 2017, Danny Griffiths was surfing off the coast of Tasmania, as one does. Specifically, he was in Pedra Branca, a region popular among surfers for its massive waves. Griffiths encountered a particularly troublesome wave and was knocked underwater for an alarming period of time. Griffiths himself was rescued, but his board never surfaced.

As it turns out, it did eventually surface — just not anywhere near where it had vanished. The BBC reported on the unusual voyage of Griffiths’ surfboard, which ended up washing ashore four years later.

As Griffiths explained to the BBC, this was no ordinary surfboard — he’d had it custom-built for surfing in this particular part of the world. The fact that it didn’t surface puzzled him, as this was not typical behavior for a surfboard.

Four years later, a pair of brothers were fishing off the coast of Queensland, nearly 1,700 miles away. They caught what seemed to be a mass of seaweed, but which turned out to be Griffiths’s lost surfboard, albeit with some added seaweed and barnacles.

Eventually, Griffiths got his lost board back — in “hundred percent surfable” condition. The specifics of how the board got to Queensland remain unknown, though it certainly wouldn’t be the first instance of lost objects washing ashore thousands of miles from home.

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