THE SEA IS ALWAYS IN CHARGE

Plettenberg Bay crew rallied to assist surfskiers at Nature’s Valley after a day out on the water turned into a nightmare. By Robin Mousley

NEAL STEPHENSON STOOD on the beach at Nature’s Valley and looked anxiously out to sea. The waves were monstrous and he could already see a couple of upturned surfskis with heads bobbing next to them in the water. He dialled the emergency number of the Plettenberg Bay NSRI station. ‘Neal is one of our team, a senior coxswain,’ said Marc Rodgers, Plett NSRI station commander. ‘So when he called, I knew there was real trouble!’ Neal was one of a dozen surfski paddlers who had set out late on the morning of 15 December 2019 to do a route from Plettenberg Bay to Nature’s Valley, a distance of some 18km. The wind was blowing an ideal 20-30 knots southwest. ‘It’s a very good paddle,’ says Carl Behrens, also a member of the group. ‘But conditions aren’t often conducive. The surf is usually too big at Nature’s, so we don’t go if there’s any swell.

‘We were all safetied up; we were all using PFDs and leashes, and we were running the SafeTrx tracking app,’ Carl says.

Chris Parnell is a lifeguard who was on duty at Nature’s Valley that day. ‘The guys had called me in the morning to ask about the surf,’ he says. ‘At that point, the sea was flat. But at lunch time the wind suddenly increased and the swell built rapidly.’ The tide had receded too and the surf started to pound. Breakers started to form on a reef offshore. Now there were two obstacles.

As Neal had paddled in at Nature’s Valley, the surf was much bigger than he’d expected but he had managed to THE SEA IN CHARGE is always thread his way through the waves and had made it to the beach, the only one of the 12 to do so without swimming.

Carl had arrived at the backline with the next group. ‘We’d had a great downwind,’ he says. ‘But when we reached the backline at Nature’s, I thought, “Oh, this is proper!’’’

Carl had hesitated, trying to decide what to do. ‘I was a little to the east of Andrew Beveridge and Daniel Meiring,’ he says. ‘Then I saw them get taken out by a wave on the reef.’ ‘I saw Dan get back onto his boat,’ he adds ‘So I decided to go for it and paddle to the beach through a rip. ‘It didn’t go so well.’ Halfway to the beach, as he made his way through the wild seas, a wall TOP: NSRI’s RIB Leonard Smith shuttles the paddlers in through the raging surf. ABOVE: Packing up after the rescue, the paddlers reflect on the events of the day.

of foam knocked Carl into the water. A second wave hit as he attempted to remount. This time his leash broke and his surfski bounced away with the wave, leaving him helpless in the strong rip current.

‘I tried everything to get out of the rip,’ he says. ‘Left, right, into the beach. But I got nowhere and eventually decided to swim back out to sea. Meanwhile Andrew had also lost his surfski. He and Daniel had been hit by the same wave, but Daniel was able to hold onto his ski, had remounted and paddled across to Andrew. Two other paddlers joined them.

Back on the beach, Neal knew it was time to call his colleagues at the NSRI base. ‘We have two separate scenarios,’ he said. ‘We need help!’

The NSRI launched both their RIBs within minutes of receiving the call: the 5.5m Ray Farnham, followed by the larger 7.3m Leonard Smith. The boats headed up the coast, bouncing in clouds of spray over the huge swells. Then disaster struck: Ray Farnham accelerated down a wave and smashed into the next swell, stopping dead in the water, the force of the impact ripping the pontoon off the nose of the hull. The side pontoon was ripped open too and the crew had no choice but to turn the craft around and head back to base.

On the beach at Nature’s Valley, Chris was alerted when he saw a bystander running down the beach. ‘There was a paddle washed up on the beach,’ he says, ‘and I could see a swimmer in the rip.’

Chris didn’t hesitate and, equipped with a lifebuoy, dived into the cold 12˚C water. ‘It was quite intimidating!’ he admits.

Neal, through the NSRI Whatsapp group, was coordinating from the beach. ‘Carl was the priority,’ he says. ‘I could see him being repeatedly sucked into the break zone where he was being pummelled.’

By the time Chris reached the backline, the large 7.3m RIB, helmed by Marc Rodgers, had arrived and plucked him from the water. Parnell was able to guide them to where Carl had been swept 200m up the coast.

‘We picked Carl up,’ says Marc, ‘and he was able to guide us to the others.’

Moving through the huge swell, the RIB found Daniel, Andrew and two other paddlers who had been waiting on their skis. Knowing that Andrew wouldn’t be able to swim in, Daniel had called the other paddlers to huddle with him. ‘I think that decision saved Andrew’s life,’ Marc said later.

The NSRI crew pulled Andrew out of the water. ‘He was on the verge of really bad hypothermia,’ Marc says. ‘He could hardly talk and couldn’t concentrate.’

Next Marc shuttled the paddlers and their surfskis, guiding the RIB through the rip current to the beach. ‘That was incredible,’ Chris recalls. ‘I’ve never seen anyone handle a boat like that before.’

‘Given Andrew’s state and the fact that the ambulance was still some distance away, we decided to take him back to base,’ says Marc. ‘We got some of his kit off, and one of the The paddlers pause for a team photo before setting off on the 18km downwind from Plettenberg Bay to Nature’s Valley.

crew sat behind him and one in front of him, hugging him to warm him up.’ The trip back to Plett was a nightmare. ‘What usually takes 20 minutes took us over an hour,’ Marc says.

At the base, after warm drinks and a hot shower, Andrew recovered rapidly. ‘These blokes were unbelievable,’ he says. ‘I’ve always known they were professional, but the compassion was remarkable.’

The rescuers and the rescued celebrated the happy ending at a gathering on 20 January.

Neal Stephenson remarked, ‘It doesn’t matter how well prepared you are; you can have all the safety gear, all the information, and the sea will still teach you a lesson.’

‘Train hard, rescue easy,’ Marc said. ‘It didn’t even cross my mind that we’d done anything special.

‘But I don’t paddle. I prefer something with an engine,’ he laughed.