Adventure Journal has published an excerpt from Nearshore, a novel by Viking due out in 2026, and the scene it opens with is pure California coast unease. The excerpt, titled The Ghost Boat, follows a surfer named Palmer who is halfway across the Tunitas Creek Bridge on the San Mateo County coast when he spots something wrong out past the surf: an unmanned Boston Whaler circling clockwise, fast and tight, about a quarter mile beyond the breakers, carving a widening spiral into the water.
Palmer had planned a quick lunch-break session at a sandbar that had been building up at Pomponio State Beach, just up Highway 1. The call about the boat ends that plan. He drives to the overlook, pulls a pair of Bushnell binoculars from the dashboard, and reads the wake — the spiral tells him the wheel has been hard to starboard for a long while. The excerpt cuts off there, but the setup is enough: a routine day on the Coast Highway interrupted by something genuinely strange on the water.
What makes the excerpt worth a read for anyone who loves this coast is how precisely it maps onto real ground. Tunitas Creek Bridge and Pomponio are real spots on the stretch of Highway 1 between Half Moon Bay and Pescadero, a drive defined by arroyos, farm stands, wind and empty beach breaks. The novel's title, Nearshore, and its opening image — a boat nobody is steering, churning a 'suicidal whirlpool' into the Pacific — tap into the exact mood that keeps surfers and road-trippers coming back to this lonely, beautiful run of coastline even when the fog never lifts.
If you have driven that road, you already know the geometry of the scene: the bridge, the notch of the creek canyon, the pull-offs where you glass the water to check the surf. If you haven't, the excerpt is a decent piece of inspiration to plan the drive — and a reminder that out here, the ocean sets the agenda, not you.
The full story continues behind Adventure Journal's subscription, alongside their archive of similar long-form coastal and adventure writing. Nearshore arrives from Viking in 2026 for readers who want the rest of Palmer's very bad afternoon.