Story by Nate Schweber
Growing up piloting boats across the teal waters of his native South Florida, Capt. Chris Wittman has seen waterspouts by the dozens. But nothing prepared him for one particular encounter with a waterspout—a dangerous, rotating, tornado-esque funnel of wind and water—back in May 2014.
Wittman, 40, who serves on the board of directors for Captains for Clean Water, had just dropped off two clients after a day of tarpon fishing. That’s when he noticed a curtain of dark clouds over Pine Island Sound, east of Fort Meyers, on Florida’s Gulf Coast.
With the ramp for his nearly 18-foot-long, spear-shaped, Hell’s Bay skiff 10 miles beyond the clouds, he weighed the options. If he tried to flank the storm, it would mean driving about 30 extra miles. Or he could stab through it, as he had done countless times. He decided to do the latter. “I was heading south; the squall was moving north,” Wittman said. “So basically I had to go through it to get back.”
In a roar of wind and the rat-a-tat of rain pelting down, a great power twisted him completely counterclockwise and threw the boat back in the direction from which it had come.
When he pierced a wall of rain on the storm’s leading edge, the atmosphere went haywire. The wind surged from 15 knots to near 90 knots. A dark gray clamped down so tightly he could barely see the tip of his skiff. And he said the waves churned “like a washing machine.”
What he couldn’t see was a waterspout inside the squall. Rain began pelting him sideways, drops shooting parallel to the water. “It physically hurt to…
