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Saving People From Massive Waves… They Almost Drowned

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A crew of skimboarders turns lifeguard the second the shorebreak starts eating tourists alive.

Jack Tenney built JOOGSQUAD PPJT on exactly this kind of footage — high-energy surf and skimboard clips shot everywhere from Florida beaches to the North Shore of Hawaii to the steep drop-offs of Cabo San Lucas. In “Saving People From Massive Waves… They Almost Drowned,” the camera catches something less about tricks and more about consequence: beachgoers caught in punishing shorebreak, getting worked by sets that don’t care whether you can swim.

Tenney and his crew aren’t lifeguards. They’re the guys already in the water with boards under their arms who end up being the closest thing to help when a rogue swell drags someone off their feet. The video strings together several of those moments — real people, real panic, no scripted rescue plan, just surfers reacting in real time.

• The video documents Tenney and fellow boarders pulling struggling swimmers and tourists out of powerful shorebreak and rip currents during real encounters, not staged stunts.
• Footage spans multiple locations the JOOGSQUAD crew has traveled to for surf and skimboard content, including Florida, Hawaii, and Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.
• Cabo’s steep drop-off beaches — a known hazard for tourists unfamiliar with the terrain — feature prominently as a setting where the shorebreak overpowers people fastest.

Cabo Shorebreak Hazards and Risks

Cabo San Lucas beaches are notorious among surfers for exactly the reason Tenney’s crew keeps filming there: the ocean floor drops off hard and fast just past the sand, so a wave that looks knee-high from shore can slam a swimmer into a steep bank of sand and then rip them back out with the undertow. Tourists who don’t surf or skimboard have no read on that terrain, and by the time they realize they’re past the break, the next set is already on top of them.

That’s the exact setup the video keeps returning to — not a formal red-flag, staffed-lifeguard-tower scenario, but the kind of unmarked, unpatrolled stretch of beach where a vacationer wades in for a photo and gets swept off their feet in seconds.

Surfers Filling the Gap

What makes the clip land is that Tenney’s crew isn’t trained for this — they’re just already positioned for it. Skimboarders and surfers spend their whole session reading swells, judging where the pull is strongest, and paddling through exactly the kind of white water that traps everyone else. When someone goes under nearby, that instinct is the difference between watching from the sand and being ten yards away with a board to grab onto.

They almost drowned — and the only reason they didn’t was a guy with a skimboard who happened to be paddling past.

It’s the same read-the-water instinct that shows up across big-wave surf culture more broadly, the kind Laird Hamilton has built entire training routines around — see Laird Hamilton’s Revolutionary Pool Workout for how seriously that world takes breath control and wave awareness. Tenney’s footage is the unscripted, real-beach version of the same idea: know the water better than the person drowning in it.

A Recurring Theme in the Channel’s Footage

This isn’t a one-off for JOOGSQUAD. The channel’s whole identity is built on documenting extreme shorebreak and rogue swells across the destinations Tenney’s crew chases waves in, and rescue moments like these have popped up before whenever the surf gets big enough to overpower casual swimmers. It sits alongside the channel’s broader catalog of ocean-heavy content, the same instinct that runs through other water-focused creators covered on this site, like the crew profiled in Bare-handed shark fishing — people who spend enough time in rough water that pulling someone out of trouble becomes second nature rather than heroics.

The lesson embedded in the footage is a blunt one: shorebreak doesn’t announce itself, and the people best equipped to help when it turns dangerous are usually already out there riding it, not standing on a tower fifty yards down the beach.