3rd August 2017. A kayaker who was pulled from the water off the Cornish coastline has returned to thank the NCI volunteer coastwatch team who saved him.
Justin Ferguson, who was on holiday in St Agnes, was on his sea kayak when a freak wave capsized him.He spent half an hour swimming to shore before he was spotted by the National Coastwatch Institution volunteers at St Agnes Head.
Justin said, "without the guys in the lookout, no one would have known I was out at sea. They spotted me and called out the Lifeboat who got me back on the boat, onto dry land and helped me recover from hypothermia". The paramedics who attended to Justin at the time are confident that had he been in the water for a further 5 minutes he would not of survived.
One of the volunteers who spotted Justin, Watchkeeper Matthew Hurst, said that if it hadn't been for the National Coastwatch team at St Agnes Head he would have drowned. " Justin was quite lucky we were able to spot him. Even through quite a powerful telescope, the kayak was only about an inch long in the viewfinder. We are glad that the rescue was successful, it could have been much worse."
The photograph (courtesy of ITV News) shows Watchkeepers Mathew Hurst (left) and Jon McLeod talking to Justin Ferguson.