A lone kayaker gave a lifejacket to a man exhausted and cramped up in the water after a boat capsized on Sunday morning, keeping him afloat until help arrived.
Fishing mates Astin Knowles and Daniel Puklowski were trolling alongside the Boulder Bank when they saw a man in the water beside a kayaker.
“He was in a pretty bad state and pretty cramped up. The kayaker gave him her lifejacket and couldn’t get him into the kayak. We couldn’t get him into our boat either. He wasn’t able to help himself because he was pretty exhausted and cramped up.”
They called for help and the harbourmaster on a jetski was able to help them get the man into the fishermen’s boat to take him to a waiting ambulance at the boat ramp. Astin says they initially could not see the capsized boat with two other people because it was some distance from where the man was found in the water.
Harbourmaster Stuart Whitehouse says three people ended up in the water after their dinghy capsized when one of them stood up and overbalanced it.
When Stuart arrived, the man still in the water was up to 200m away from the capsized dinghy and could have drowned if the kayaker and fishermen had not seen him and got a lifejacket over his shoulder.
“He was panicking, cramping and a classic case of near drowning potential because he wasn’t wearing a lifejacket. When you have cramping in the legs, trying to keep afloat, it’s all downhill.
“The danger of someone panicking in the water is they can unstable a vessel and can overturn a kayak.”
Stuart says getting some sort of flotation in the water and trying to get a person to remain calm, while calling for assistance, is often safer than trying to get someone onto a small vessel. He says the capsizing is a timely reminder going into the holiday season to wear lifejackets and it is compulsory on vessels 6m or smaller to wear them at all times.
“You need to be wearing them all the time for this exact reason. This happened on a flat, calm day – the guy stood up and it capsized. That sort of boat doesn’t have what we call reserve buoyancy and it’s easy to become unstable.”
Stuart says the trio in the dinghy had a VHF radio and cell phone, but when the boat capsized, “both of those went to the bottom”.
A communication device needs to be in a waterproof bag and attached to a person, he says.
“These guys were very fortunate there were people around who saw them.”
