Mavericks claims another life on Wednesday March 16, 2011. Second Hawaiian in 17 years. It brings back grim times for the community which was like yesterday when Mark Foo dies doing wheat he did best, Surfing monster waves.
Sion Milosky, arguably one of the best big wave surfers in the world dies after a bomb wave sends him off his board, QUICKLY followed by another monster 2 wave hold down. There has been many close calls at Mavericks but all surfers that dare to paddle out to surf the massive walls of water knows the ricks involved.
Milosky recently won North Shore Underground Surfer of the Year. The prize money was a helping hand which brought him to Northern California to surf Mavs. Along with Nathan Fletcher they ventured out here which happened to be the biggest winter swells of the year. Milosky leaves behind his 2 young girls and his loving wife. He will be greatly missed and remembered as an icon in the surfing community.
Below is the last moments of Sion Milosky's last wave and subsequent drowning. As told by Chris Killen videographer:
"The guys have been here all week and there has been back to back storms in the Pacific and this was the week for Mavericks to break.
The size of the waves were about 18 to 20 foot, a few 40 foot faces, inconsistent and some seriously big waves coming through for sure.
When Sion went down it was like 6:30 and it was still really light out and to be honest a lot of guys went in, they thought the swell had peaked. For about 30 minutes to an hour there were only a few waves that were breaking.
The rest of the guys were staying out to catch the last of the bombs.
I filmed Sion's last wave.
I had Ryan Sealbach on the back of my ski and we saw Sion go down on a bomb.
It looked like there was a huge jump in the swell and the rest of the evening after Sion's wave the waves were huge.
He was pretty deep on a big one and went super top to bottom and just bulldozed him and you see that a lot out there. The wave passed and his board was tombstoning.
He had an 11-foot board and only two feet of it was sticking out. Add a 15-foot leash and Sion is at the bottom of that.
I said at that moment I have to get in there and the next wave just detonates on him right on top of where the board was.
And when that wave passed, I raced into the bowl and the board had vanished into thin air and I didn't know what to do.
Usually you see a board pop up. I got close to mushroom rock and on my way back out I saw Shawn Dollar get a bomb and get obliterated and I race in and grab in to get Dollar and he thanks me and he says the wave was so gnarly that it ripped off the spare can of air that he had attached to his suit.
Shawn Dollar had that crazy look in his eyes and I take him back out to the bowl and I run across Kyle Buthman, Ryan Chachi. No one has seen Sion and I rush back in and look for him and I wasn't really paying attention and I got caught by a wave and shot out of it on the side and I see Nathan Fletcher looking at his ski.
In my mind I think he has Sion, but he had gone back in to get another board. I ask him if he had seen Sion and I haven't seen him.
Nathan said he hasn't seen him and we go look in the lagoon and mushroom rock and look around. We can't find him and we start to panic and realize that it has been a long time and I figured Sion had gone in.
I check the inside of the rocks and hoping that I would see him and I don't see anything and I look out into the surf and realize that it is Sion.
I run over there I could see down the break wall towards the harbor entrance and I see Nathan Fletcher waving his arms, on the front of his ski.
He has Sion on the front of his ski and he is lifeless. I started getting really sad and we raced to the beach as fast as we can and I hit the beach so hard I flipped over the bars of the ski.
We pull Sion off the ski and Ben Andrews helped us get him up there and we lay Sion on his back and his lips and jaw are blue and his eyes are bloodshot.
I started to do CPR and tell Nate to have someone call 911.
As we continue to do CPR foam and blood is pouring out of his mouth and Shane Desmond comes in doing chest compressions and I am making sure his airway is clear.
And we just sat there and begged Sion to come back until the medics got there. They hooked him up to IV and put a tube into his lungs and kept doing CPR with a pretty big scene on the beach.
They cut his suit off and we find a flotation device in his suit and it freaks me out that a guy like Sion arguably one of the gnarliest big wave surfers in the world could not survive a Mavericks hold down even with a floatation device. Once they put him in the ambulance we knew he was gone.”
