Our beneficiaries

“This foundation has benefits for the recipients of our service – the people whom we rescue and whose futures we have given back when they thought it had gone, as well as for the rescue crew themselves, learning life lessons and experiencing things that few others do.”

Lives saved with rescue operations Lives saved with Pink Rescue Buoy Children taught Water Safety Children taught Survival Swimming Total

IN 2019 WE TAUGHT 574 99 children through our Water Safety in schools programme and 156 children were taught Survival Swimming

949 People WE RESCUED 43 Animals We responded to 757 rescues

Total Black White Foreign Unknown Animals 949 488 292 93 76 43 22 1 8 3 10 574 099 571 616 2483 156 155 1 575 266 572 260 2 784 96 86 43

NUMBER OF OPERATIONS 691 *

138 89 57 50 38 27 19

Tow request Person in water Missing person search Medevac Trapped animal / Whale disentanglement Missing vessel search Unidentified object – investigation

10 8 7 6 5 2 2

Equipment transfer request Personnel transfer request Body search MOB Flood / Swift water incident Emergency landing Unidentified object – recovery

1 1 1 1 1 1 0

Crew transfer Fire (Land – based) Hiker Person in difficulty Shark incident Shark sighting Missing person search

*691 primary rescues and 66 rescues assisting other stations = 757 rescues

CASE STUDY

STATION 5 (DURBAN) RESPONDED TO A YACHT IN DISTRESS

In the early hours of Thursday, 4 April 2019, station 5 was alerted by Durban Port Control to a yacht in distress just off the south-break water of the harbour. Together with the NSRI, the South African Police Service, Transnet National Ports Authority (TNPA)and Netcare 911 also responded to the mayday. Lorenzo TavernaTurisan, class 1 coxswain who responded to the call with Roy Wienand and crew David Hoffman and Julian Singh, explains that this part of the harbour is sometimes referred to as “the graveyard” as sand carried from further down the coast gets trapped here and causes swells of between 3m and 3.5m. On arrival, they discovered that the yacht had run aground against the dolosse and one person was stuck between the broken mast and the dolosse.

The TNPA’s tug and pilot boat were located in the harbour channel, so Megan II, the NSRI boat, was manouevred alongside the tug in order to transfer David and Julian to shore. They had to descend the dolosse from the harbour wall to bring the very frightened woman off the yach to safety. Julian recalls that it was dark and the woman kept screaming for help. They climbed over dolosse that are double the length of the average person and it was very risky as, once the reached her, they had to time their efforts between the swell that were causing the mast to flick back and forth. Their calm approach, under very trying circumstances, prevailed and the woman was brought safely to shore. They later

learned that there were five crew on board and they were hit by a set of waves that washed the skipper overboard. The yacht motored itself past the south brakewater, but the skipper swam after it and managed to get back on board. He tried to use the swells to motor the yacht off the sand, but it was no use. The yacht was taken by the swell and ran aground. Lorenzo says it was an intense rescue, executed within about 45 minutes and all crew members were safe and sound.