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A prominent Long Island surfer disappeared while riding the waves in Indonesia yesterday during a remote-island vacation with his wife and a friend.
Danny Bobis, 32, who founded and coached the acclaimed Long Beach HS surf team, disappeared at around 9 a.m. local time while surfing 12-foot waves on a reef off Sumatra.
“It was just a day like any other here,” Bobis’ grief-stricken pal Brian Lonergan, 32, told The Post through tears from his hotel there.
“Danny had just taken a wave before me. I couldn’t see him, and a few minutes later, his board washed up on the shore.”
For the next 11 hours Lonergan, Bobis’ wife, Rachel, 28, and Jason King — the owner of Krui Dami Bungalow surf camp, where the trio were staying — scoured the beach for any other sign of the missing surfer.
“We pretty much searched the beach ’til nightfall and still have not found him,” Lonergan said.
A professional search-and-rescue dive team arrived at the surf camp late last night and was expected to join the search today, Lonergan said. It’s a perilous six-hour drive from the nearest airport, and he had no idea where the closest hospital was.
“The water wasn’t especially rough,” he said. “And there was nothing really abnormal about the size of the waves either. Danny is a really capable surfer and a really capable swimmer.”
He said the group has been pleading with local authorities and the US Consulate to send a rescue helicopter to aid the search, but due to the reef’s remote location, they were told air support was a long shot.
The group had been on a six-week surfing safari, exploring exotic reefs across the Far East since June 30.
Bobis is a beloved math teacher, a mentor for kids in the community and the co-founder of the Long Beach Surfer’s Association. He coaches New York state’s only high-school surf team.
Bobis and his wife have been married for about five years.
“Rachel said this was their last big hurrah before they settled down and started a family,” said a friend of the couple.