January 12, 2026 — 4:03pm
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A West Australian man has described the moment he surfaced after a morning of diving to find his boat had disappeared, leaving him stranded in the ocean and far from shore.
Ryan Chapman and a friend had anchored off Mindarie, a popular coastal destination in Perth’s northern suburbs, to go diving and fishing at the weekend.
Chapman told this masthead the pair had intended to have a deckhand aboard to monitor the boat while they were in the water, but another friend was unable to join them.
“The weather was good so we just decided to send it anyway,” Chapman said.
He said the pair periodically surfaced to check on the anchored boat and had no cause for concern.
However, when Chapman came up for air after about an hour in the water, he realised what had happened.
“I came up, and the boat was gone,” he said. “I couldn’t see it at all.”
Chapman said his first thought was that the boat had sunk.
“To be honest, the first thing going through my head was the boat’s and my co-owner is going to kill me,” he said.
Perth fisher Ryan Chapman surfaced from a diving expedition near Quinns Rocks to discover his boat had come loose and drifted away.Instagram/@ryanchapman___
Chapman and his friend spotted a nearby fishing boat, which was about a kilometre from their position.
He said it took them about an hour to swim towards it, with the pair splashing and yelling to attract attention.
Rescuer Tahnee Forster said they soon noticed Chapman in distress and motored out to meet him.
She said it took them a moment to find Chapman’s companion.
“[Ryan mentioned his] friend, and the first thing that clocked in our heads was, ‘oh OK, there’s somebody else out there’,” she said.
“Then when we saw him and it was just relief – we just had a bit of a joke around after that.”
The men eventually found their boat about two kilometres from where they had last been diving, and Chapman said he believed it was likely a knot that came loose on his anchor and the boat had been pulled by the current.
Undeterred by the ordeal, Chapman said they didn’t go home straight away and kept fishing.
“We couldn’t go home empty-handed,” he said.
When asked her message for the pair, Forster joked they owed her a pint.
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