Swimmer plucked from Exe as chance passing saves life

A chance passing of a buoy on the ‘wrong’ side saved the life of a stranded swimmer, Exeter City Council has revealed.

The fortunate swimmer – who was suffering the early stages of hypothermia - was plucked out of the Exe Estuary one mile from shore by the City Council’s Harbour Patrol team. The rescue happened last Wednesday.

The team would have missed the swimmer, who was clinging onto the base of the navigational marker, if they had kept the buoy on the port (left-hand) side of the boat. Instead, skipper and Harbourmaster Grahame Forshaw decided to pass with the buoy on starboard side – a decision which saved the swimmer’s life.

At the time of the rescue, the team were carrying out essential work on the navigational aids in the just off Topsham, onboard specialist mooring maintenance vessel, the Can-Doo.

On board that day and joining Grahame were two other harbour patrollers, Nick Stone and Graham Manchester.

Once work was completed, Grahame skippered the boat back towards Exmouth. He takes up the story:

“Up in that part of the Exe, the navigation buoys are quite well spread out and a considerable distance from the shore. The weather was fair and bright, a lovely day to be out afloat and because it was a weekday, not a lot of boat traffic. However the tide was on the ebb so the current was moving at quite a pace of around three knots or just over three miles per hour, which as many will know, swimming against a flow of that speed is exhausting.

“As we came down the channel and about 100 metres from the green No. 31 buoy (just off Exton on the Western shore) we would normally pass this turn keeping the buoy on our left (port) hand side. I don’t know why, but it just seemed to me that the buoy didn’t look right in the water so I elected to pass on the wrong side of the mark, passing the buoy on our right (starboard) side.

“As we rounded the buoy, all three of us in the wheelhouse could see a young man clinging to the ‘blind’ side of the buoy. If we had passed it on the right side we may not have spotted him!

“Immediately we saw him, I put the two engines into astern gear to stop the boat moving forward, and the two crew threw the swimmer a life ring buoy with a line, which the young man grabbed hold of.

“We quickly got the poor chap on board, put him in the wheelhouse and dried him off with a towel before putting some dry clothes on him. He was in a pretty poor state. The man was shivering uncontrollably, clearly shocked and fearful about almost losing his life. Once we had started to get some warmth into him he told us that he had parked his car over on the Starcross side of the estuary and because it was a fine day he decided to go for a swim.

“The distance from where he went into the water to where we spotted him is almost a mile. He had no chance of getting back to where he started and he was exhausted as well as starting to suffer the effects of hypothermia. If he hadn’t been spotted, he would very soon have started to lose the ability to swim, would have let go of the buoy and probably drowned.”

Grahame turned the boat around and moved at best speed toward Turf Lock and called 999. The young man was starting to recover from his ordeal but the crew wanted to get him checked over by the Emergency Services.

When the Can-Doo arrived at Turf, the Canal team were waiting to meet them and shortly afterwards the Ambulance arrived.

Grahame has since warned people not to get carried away and to respect the power of the tides: “The water around UK shores rarely gets above 14-15 degrees and the temperature of the water in the Exe is always going to be cooler because a large part of it is rainwater/river run-off from the land which hasn’t been warmed by the sun in the shallows around the coast,” he said.

“If you are tempted to get in the water just stop, take a moment to think about what you are doing and never get into the water without somebody on the shore watching out for you. Never go out alone or too far from the shore. It is well known that most people who sadly drown, do so within five metres of the shore.”