As I was gazing out the window enjoying my beautiful view of the valley and bay, it starting raining over the water, and from the moment that I noticed a parasailer floating down towards the beach, I thought “Oh, I sure wouldn’t want to be out there right now.” But it didn’t float down to the beach, it started going back up and I wondered if I was actually witnessing a rope break.
The upward movement capped off, so I deduced that it must have been an updraft that came with the sudden rain. I called out to my family, “Hey, come look at this, someone is caught in an updraft and they can’t land,” and my daughter came to join me.
Just then, the parasail suddenly did what I would call “plummeting upward,” and we assumed at that point that the rope did actually break. It’s hard to tell from such a distance, but it looked like it suddenly rose about a hundred feet. Next we could see the top of the parasail with a grey circle in the center coming at us, it looked like an eyeball. We knew if we were seeing the top it must be moving in a sideways manner, and probably moving very fast for it to be in that position.
The parasail calmed to a normal position and started moving, so at that point we thought the rope probably didn’t break, and that the boat must have been successful in turning around to pull the parasail out of the updraft. We watched it gently come down so we assumed that they landed back on the beach, though my daughter said no, it looked like it was more inland.
It only took a few minutes for stories to start going up on Facebook, and we learned that yes, the rope did break. At this point I can only reiterate unconfirmed reports from Facebook, apparently it was a young girl who landed in the Versaille area, and we have not heard yet if she is injured but she did survive.
We certainly hope she is okay, and our thoughts are with her. It must have been an unbelievably terrifying experience.
*videos from Facebook*