New Years Eve death as woman swept away in rough seas in Devon Eyewitnesses said she had been body-boarding at Croyde Bay, near Barnstaple, North Devon, when she went missing at around 11.20am. An eyewitness who surfs regularly at Croyde said: "The sea was pretty rough and messy. There was no one else surfing or bodyboarding that we could see. The rescue teams did everything they could but it must have been really difficult to see anything in all the white water. Soon after the alarm was raised we saw a man in a wetsuit crying as he carried carried three body-boards back up the beach.