Swept out to sea
Sucked back in the surf following a freak wave, Theo Crawford, 15, frantically called for help as he and big brother Marty, 20, lost sight of the shoreline.
“I had my arm in the air and I was . . . trying to wave out and I was yelling out,” Crawford recalls of his terrifying ordeal at Karioitahi beach near Waiuku in March.
“My brother put me on his back and tried swimming back in, and we just couldn’t.”
The Waiuku College student said he and Marty were about 100m offshore, in water around rib height, when he spotted the wave coming towards them.
“I was trying to go back in because I saw it was big, but it was still pulling me back. It just got super deep and took us out. I was really scared. I thought it was just going to keep taking us out.”
With the beach out of sight, Marty stayed with him telling him to stay calm and reassuring him, “It’ll be alright, someone will come out”. That someone turned out to be a young lifeguard who sprang into action to rescue the pair.
“I yelled out ‘Help!’ to her. And she said, ‘Yeah I’m coming’,” Crawford said.
“When she got to me, she just put her arm around me and I was like, ‘Thank you’.” The lifeguard helped them to safety, guiding the brothers through a succession of waves on their return to shore. “Every time
. . . a wave would get close, she’d go, ‘Three, two, one, dive’, and then we’d dive under and swim forwards a bit.” Back on the beach, Crawford, out of breath and having “swallowed a lot of water”, was cared for by another lifeguard until he recovered. Both he and his brother were reasonable swimmers and the surf was not too rough that day, he said, but he was surprised at how quickly conditions could change in the water. He was incredibly grateful to both the surf lifesavers and is now considering training to become one himself.