Guernsey Press

Teenage friends save man from drowning

TWO teenagers from Guernsey have saved a man from drowning while on a surfing trip in South Africa, thanks to skills learned at lifeguard training on their home island.

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Ben Relph, 18, left, and Fin Whitmore, 19, who have been friends since the age of 5, used lifesaving training they learned with the Guernsey Surf School at Vazon when they ran into the surf at a beach in Sedgefield, South Africa, right, to rescue a 29-year-old man from Johannesburg, who was being swept out to sea by rip currents.

Friends Ben Relph, 18, and Fin Whitmore, 19, were on a break from surfing at Sedgefield Western Cape last Monday when they swam out to a man struggling in the rip currents. Both boys had enrolled on a lifeguard training course with the Guernsey Surf School last summer.

The pair were able to get to the casualty and bring him ashore before the country’s National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI) buoy could be brought to the water’s edge.

Between them the youths and two bystanders – a blind ambulance volunteer and newly-qualified doctor – were able to stabilise the man after the two Guernsey teenagers realised he had swallowed a lot of sea water and was starting to drift in and out of consciousness.

‘We were only there for a night, so it’s mad that it happened at that time,’ said Fin.

‘We were just eating pizza in the restaurant nearby when a woman came charging in saying someone was drowning.

‘It turned out he had been swimming with his child, who was in hysterics on the beach. They’d been separated somehow and the man was out at sea.

‘We didn’t see him at first. It was pretty intense, we were just straightaway off sprinting down the beach.

‘Thanks to our training we know to sort of assess the situation as we’re running down. When we saw him he was only about 25 metres from the shore but he’d gone over a sand bank under the water.

‘Ben got to him first and grabbed him just as he was going down then pushed him towards me. We co-ordinated with each other on it, we’re both surfers so we hear about people getting into trouble a lot.

‘The main thing we remembered from our training with the Surf School was to swim out as strong as fast as you can.’ he said.

Full story in today's Guernsey Press