A surfboard lost at sea off the southern tip of Australia nearly a year and a half ago has turned up some 1,500 miles away, caked in barnacles but otherwise intact. The board's unexpected journey ended about two weeks ago when kite surfer Alvaro Bon, a French expat living in New Zealand, spotted it while seeking shelter in a remote part of Raglan Harbour on the North Island's west coast after losing his own kite to strong currents. Bon stashed the cream-colored, 7-foot-6 board in the dunes before retrieving it a few days later, reports the BBC. After cleaning the board, he spotted a distinctive maker's mark. "Wonder if the board could have drifted from east Australia??" he wrote on social media, alongside photos of his find.
Hundreds of people joined the hunt for the board's owner, a man soon identified only as Liam. After a friend shared Bon's post, Liam reported the board—which he described as irreplaceable because the designer has stopped making surfboards—had blown off a boat off the island state of Tasmania in May 2024, still in its bag, per ABC Australia. He was able to share photos of the board before it vanished, proving his ownership, and has now made arrangements for it to be collected in Auckland and returned to him. Reflecting on the incident and the loss of his own kite, Bon mused that "sometimes you need to let go of some stuff to find better." Meanwhile, the board's designer, Josh Fairleigh, said, "This board may have accumulated more ocean time and wisdom than all of us," per ABC.
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