I've seen boats broached in that channel both going out and coming in. Those aren't "normal" conditions, but you'll see days a few times each summer (some years more than others). The channel is about 10-12 feet deep at the bar with a vertical wall on the reef side and pretty steep too rip-wrap on the Magic Island side (where the camera man was). While those sets were peeking in the channel they were not really breaking there and that's generally considered doable for boats with reliable power.
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There's no beach. There's a reef on one side and boulders on the other. And the channel is not very wide... But, amazingly enough, most folks who wipe out are swept back into the channel. Going out is easier than coming in because you can see the wave faces coming. It is a lot harder to judge the waves from outside. I saw one Cal 25 come in from outside, get broached 90 degrees and rotated 90 degrees broadside to the wave. Three of four people on board went overboard... And, the boat came to a stop mid channel inside and everyone climbed back aboard and carried on home... These guys had been hanging out outside the channel all day waiting for a break to get in and did pick a relative flat... That was in epic surf -- the whole channel was closing out and it was deeper then. All the daymarks were swept away, too... In the over twenty years I lived there (most of it in an apartment where I could see that channel) I don't think any boats were lost as a direct result of big surf -- several were broken up by surf after missing the channel but that's different.
Looks like they lost a cushion or something in that picture... those waves certainly look intimidating to me.
--Tom.
