I sort of saw this happening before it actually did. A group of lunchtime footballers were playing soccer in the park which is immediately behind me. I was in fact going to see whether I could sneak a couple of action shots of them which possibly contributed to my failure to react to the situation unfolding before me.

A wayward kick sent the ball scurrying across field toward a ramp that lead down to the wharf that I'm standing on. The wharf which has no barriers between itself and the water. I knew exactly what was going to happen; the ball would fly down the ramp and launch itself off the wharf. Now as some of you may know I have been intermittently practising my soccer skills (or perhaps, it would be more accurate to say developing some) and do have some experience of my ball going into the ocean before I swapped training on the beach with training in the park alongside the beach. However in my case the waves would always bring it back. In this case, there were no waves and aside from that it was about 2 m from the wharf down to the water so it's not just a case of reaching down and picking the thing up.

Had it been my own ball or had I been part of that game, I probably would have charged forward and heroically attempted to head the ball back into the park. However since neither of those conditions applied I could already guess how that would have turned out; I would have missed spectacularly and ended up looking like a complete idiot. It was therefore safer to stay where I was and allow the ball to sail into the water.

I believe that it was recovered though, as a couple of guys on the (private and fenced off) wharf that runs alongside the 12 m yacht that we see here came along and tried to fish it out. By then I had already moved on since my lack of work here was done.

(The title of the shot is a reference to the film Castaway. You will either know it or you won't, but if you don't I do recommend the film as one to watch when you have the opportunity.)