MOSSEL BAY NEWS - A 3m great white shark gave local surfing legend Llewellyn 'Lu' Whittaker the fright of his life, at Outerpool, at Mossel Bay's Point.
The SA junior surfing team coach and long-time Mossel Bay resident says he has been surfing in Mossel Bay since the age of 10, and at The Point since he was 12; he has surfed in Tergniet, Glentana and all the 'sharkie spots', but never in his wildest dreams expected to have such a close encounter 'on his own doorstep'.
It happened on Sunday, 20 May, when the swell was big and the sea quite stormy. Lu had taken six kids out for training and they were waiting for the tide to change so they could go surf 'dingdang'.
He went out by himself and after about 40 minutes waiting right at the back of the waves, he saw something coming towards him from the corner of his eye.
'A shark was swimming towards me, diagonally from my right hand side.'
The shark was within a metre of him, so close that he was easily able to identify it as a great white.
Instinctively, he pulled his feet up on his board and then the shark back off, creating a distance of about 5m.
However, it turned around - at an alarming speed and vigour - and came straight back at Lu. It was then that Lu realised he needed to get away and he started padding towards the rocks, watching the shark over his shoulder.
'It was following me, I'm not sure for how long, because after looking back about two or three times, I stopped looking and focused on getting to the rocks,' Lu recalls. He says he's seen sharks before, but this one was big enough for him to be really scared and as he was paddling, he was praying out loud. Only when he reached the rocks, he realised that he had made it and started screaming from the adrenaline and pure relief.
'I wouldn't say the shark was aggressive, just inquisitive,' he says.
'In my 24 years of surfing, this was the closest encounter I've had. It's the most bizarre experience - I can't get the picture out of my mind.'
Not that this has put him off from ever surfing again - he left this week for Cape Town for the Billabong SA Champs.
ARTICLE: MARI SCOTT - Mossel Bay Advertiser
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