Graeme Harding, NSRI Knysna station commander, said; “At 13h33 on Thursday 16 February 2012, NSRI Knysna volunteer sea rescue duty crew were activated following reports of a paraglider crashed into the sea at Castle Rock near Brenton-On-Sea.
“Initially eye-witnesses reported the incident as a drowning in progress reporting both the paraglider and his wife, who had gone into the water from the beach to try to rescue her husband, in difficulties in the surf.
“Our NSRI volunteer sea rescue duty crew dispatched our sea rescue vehicle and we placed an all alert to any of our NSRI sea rescue swimmers who were able to respond directly to the scene in their private vehicles to respond.
“On arrival on-scene we found both the paraglider and his wife safely on the shore after both had been rescued from the surf by an unidentified bystander.
“Other paragliders, from the same group as the casualty, had then landed on the shore and were in the process of recovering the paraglider canopy from the surf when we arrived.
“Both husband and wife, Wynand Coertzen, 54, and his wife Nicola, 55, from Wilderness, were treated for multiple abrasions, lacerations and bruising by our NSRI medics and a WC Government Health: EMS ambulance was summoned to the scene and paramedics also assisted in treating their wounds but both declined transport by ambulance to hospital and have opted to visit their own doctor in their own time and left the scene using their own transport.
“The unidentified bystander who rescued the couple left the scene before any details from him could be obtained.
“It appears that a group of paragliders had departed from the top of a hill above Brenton-On-Sea and the casualty appears to have made a forced landing and had, by our observations of the scene, chosen to land in the sea rather than possibly risking serious injury by landing on Castle Rock.
“Upon landing eye-witnesses claim he had appeared to be in grave danger in the surf, and caught up in his paragliders ropes and canopy, when his wife went into the surf to try to rescue him but then got into difficulty herself (according to eye-witness reports). The unidentified bystander then intervened.”
[wpramazon asin=”B000X8SS9Y”]
