Big catch tows angler out to sea

KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

Published Dec 3, 2014

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Durban - In a rescue tale that echoed Ernest Hemingway’s classic novel, The Old Man and the Sea, a fisherman was pulled several kilometres out to sea on his paddle ski by a tuna he hooked off Ballito on Tuesday.

Rescuers said Nicolas van der Westhuysen, 38, had refused to relinquish his 23kg catch, hanging on to his rod even though the tuna refused to give up the fight.

His fellow paddlers had just beached at Salmon Bay when Van der Westhuysen was spotted being dragged south-east, said Paul Herbst of IPSS Medical Services.

When he did not return, they alerted rescuers.

“The man was found two hours later near the uTongati River mouth,” he said.

“He was fine, just extremely tired and dehydrated.”

Van der Westhuysen said: “I went after the tuna, I wasn’t rushing and took my time.

“The wind was quite hectic and pulled me out a bit. I wasn’t paying attention to how fast I was going and was blown off the mark.

“I would have made it back. I thought I was keeping tabs but when I checked on the GPS I was about 6km from where I originally hooked up so I started putting pressure to land the fish. At no stage was I worried.

“In fact, I was debating going with the wind, beaching somewhere else and phoning a mate to come pick me up, but I decided to rather put my head down and paddle back.”

He said he had covered about 5km when rescuers got to him.

Quinton Power, from Specialised Rescue Care Unit, said: “There were about five paddlers who were out with him. The other paddlers beached at about 6.30am and it was just about then that they saw him being dragged.”

An hour later, when there was no sign of him, they raised the alarm.

“We commenced the search and he was picked up by the lifeguards in their rubber-duck. They loaded him and his craft into the vessel and took him back to Salmon Bay where they beached safely,” he said.

“He was paddling back to where he launched when they found him... he still had the craft - and the fish,” Power said.

The Mercury

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