LANGEBAAN, February 26 (ANA) – A young girl was seriously injured when she was hit by an unmanned, out of control rubber duck at sea off the Mykonos Harbour at Langebaan north of Cape Town on Sunday, the National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI) said.
NSRI Mykonos duty crew responded at 10.30am to reports of a boating accident in the Langebaan Lagoon, launching the Transnet National Ports Authority (TNPA) rescue runner, NSRI Mykonos station commander Casper Frylinck said.
It appears that a local yacht, Yacht Sky, a 55ft Swift yacht, got stuck on a sand bank at the Mykonos Harbour entrance. Two private rubber ducks had gone to help by rigging tow ropes to the bow and side of the yacht to attempt to tow the yacht off the sand bank. According to reports one rubber duck pulled from the bow and the other from the halyard to attempt to lift the keel of the yacht off the sand.
The rubber ducks managed to pull the yacht free but according to eyewitness accounts the three people on the one rubber duck – reportedly from Stellenbosch – pulling the bow were thrown off their boat during the effort to tow the yacht.
The rubber duck motor may not have had a kill switch attached, causing their boat to start circling the three people, a father, his son, and his daughter, now in the water, at full power and running over the 10-year-old daughter causing motor propellor lacerations to her arm and legs, Frylinck said.
A small 4.2 metre rubber duck went to try to assist and attempted to push the out of control boat away from the people in the water, but got damaged in the process and the skipper beached the damaged boat. The NSRI’s TPNA rescue runner recovered the rubber duck and towed him back into the harbour.
“Then a bigger rubber duck, in an attempt to assist, purposefully collided with the out of control boat to push it off course and avoid the boat from colliding with the people in the water. A man on a jet-ski was also trying to help. The swell pushed the casualty boat onto the beach where a member of the public boarded the rubber duck and he drove it back into the harbour,” he said.
“While this was happening the Mykonos Marina’s boat was on its way back to Mykonos Harbour from recovering buoys from the lagoon and they rescued the father and his injured daughter from the water, bringing them into the harbour while his son was picked up by the yacht that was now successfully off the sand bank.
“On arrival at the jetty the girl was assisted by a bystander who is a first aider and by two of our NSRI Mykonos medics and they handed her into the care of paramedics from Atlantic Medical Response that arrived on scene within minutes. The girl was transported to Vredenburg Hospital by Atlantic Medical for further treatment in a serious but stable condition. The father and son required no medical assistance. The injuries to the girl were lacerations to both legs and to her left arm,” Frylinck said.
– African News Agency (ANA)
Photo: Robyn Schultz,
