Andre Fletcher
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Above: Andre Fletcher
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Sea Rescue
On the evening of June 17th, Andre Fletcher, full time IT administrator and volunteer Crewman of the National Sea Rescue Institute’s Station 5, received a call to help the three man crew of the 34 foot yacht “Eggnog”. That afternoon, the yacht was caught in a Force 7 gale with 4-meter swells and heavy rainsqualls about 1½ miles off the coast, some 40 nautical miles south of Durban. It was at this point that an emergency was declared.
Immediately, Station 5 launched their 10-meter Brede rescue boat to save the crew, but due to the appalling weather conditions the boat made very slow progress. A helicopter rescue was then called. The crew prepared the helicopter contracted to Transnet’s National Port Authority and Andre bravely volunteered to be the team rescue swimmer.
Forty minutes later, in increasingly worsening weather, with a 100 foot cloud base and 35 knot gales, the team found the Eggnog. With darkness threatening and the seas growing more turbulent, it became apparent that retrieving the crew from the deck of the yacht was not going to be possible. The decision was made to pull them from the water and hoist them into the helicopter.
Andre was lowered into the raging waters and motioned for the crew to jump in and swim towards him, but no one did so. After a brief period of being swung to and fro and being dunked and suspended within the big swells, Andre was hoisted back into the helicopter. The rescue crew signaled for the crew of the Eggnog to once again jump in and swim towards Andre, who was again winched down into the angry sea. This time one person followed the rescue team’s instructions and dived into the water, where Andre was able to locate him and secure a strop by the searchlight of the helicopter. The two of them were then hoisted into the helicopter. This was repeated again, until there was only one person left on the yacht.
It quickly became clear though, that this final crewman was reluctant to enter the water and he would have to be persuaded to do so. Meanwhile, Andre was swinging around at the end of the winchline, being subjected to the constant battering of the heavy swells. Eventually the remaining man jumped ship, but made no attempt to swim towards Andre. Andre swam over to him, secured him and the two men were finally hoisted to the safety of the helicopter. At long last, the helicopter could return to the calm of its base at Durban harbour.
For volunteering to save the lives of total strangers, Andre Fletcher is a deserving nominee in the Centrum Guardian Project.
