High risks, no paycheck: what motivates NSRI volunteers to save others from SA's treacherous seas

20 February 2017 - 14:56 By Matthew Sterne
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The NSRI is made up of about 1 000 unpaid volunteers whose mission is to ‘save lives at sea and help those in peril’.
The NSRI is made up of about 1 000 unpaid volunteers whose mission is to ‘save lives at sea and help those in peril’.
Image: Supplied

Imagine a Cape storm, the type that strikes fear into the hearts of experienced seamen and earned the peninsula its feared reputation as a destroyer of ships. The sea is transformed into a powerful beast, with waves as high as buildings and freezing water that feels like it's straight from the Antarctic. The sea lashes the coast with gargantuan swells.

And in the very heart of the storm, you're called out in your small boat to rescue some hapless fishermen. You risk your life in the treacherous conditions, venturing out in a midnight darkness, rain and waves pound at your vessel, the sea throwing you around like a rag doll, all to save some strangers. And you do it for free.

For 50 years, volunteers at the National Sea Rescue Institute have been doing exactly that, endeavouring to ''save lives at sea and help those in peril", as their motto goes. They're on call for a week at a time, sacrificing family braais, first ballet eisteddfods, children's birthdays and other special occasions to be endangered, cold, wet, and often sent on false alarms.

The demands on volunteers are relentless. As one said: "It doesn't change your life, it becomes your life." And yet there are over 1,000 people who do it. So who are these people who give their lives to the sea and keep us safe? And why do they do it?

"People join the NSRI because they want to give something back to the community and they have a passion for the sea. Either that or they can't afford a boat," Ian Klopper, station commander at Kommetjie, says with a laugh.

Klopper, an ebullient and laid-back man who works for a medivac operations company, has been a volunteer for 35 years. "It's an invasion on your life as you give up a lot of time, but it's so worth it when you are there and able to go out and save someone's life."

Andrew Ingram, a volunteer with 36 years experience who now works in drowning prevention at head office, agrees. "For people who love the sea it's amazing. You get to go out in cool boats to beautiful places and the excitement and adrenaline of going to sea on a rescue is immense, but the thing that keeps everyone going back is their first rescue. When you and your crew find someone in the water and you give them a hand into the boat and you know that if you weren't there they wouldn't have survived, well you just keep going back because it's an amazing feeling."

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The NSRI's roots go back to 1966. There was a terrible storm near Stilbaai and three fishing boats sank, taking the lives of 17 fishermen with them. The disaster spurred Patti Price (whose own life had been saved by an RNLI lifeboat in the English Channel) to start a committed letter-writing campaign for the formation of a sea rescue organisation in South Africa. The following year, the NSRI was born.

The first base started out of a shed in Three Anchor Bay, and now there are 35 bases around the country, with a handful at inland dams. Early records on the NSRI are nonexistent. As Ingram puts it, "The volunteers just went out, rescued people and carried on with their lives." They're a much more professional outfit these days and the records over the last five years show that, on average, the NSRI has saved 825 people a year.

"It changed my life. And the things that you experience change your life too," Ernesta Swanepoel, a volunteer at Bakoven and an environmental lawyer, says.

''Sea rescue grounded me because it gave me a massive purpose. I'm also convinced that I'm better at my job because of Sea Rescue. I call it precision thinking. For instance, if you work with a helicopter it's the smallest things that matter. You need to think about every single thing that you do because if you make a small mistake it can cost your life and someone else's life."

The sense of community is a huge pillar of its success, and attraction. The volunteers all call it their ''second family".

"Everyone is so different but the same," says Ingram. "One of the last crews that I worked with, we had a lawyer, a plumber, an electrician, a photographer, and an insurance salesman. And it doesn't matter where society perceives your place to be in the social echelons, it's your skill at sea that puts you in a rank structure on a rescue boat," he says.

"Here at the NSRI we'll take you in as a man off the street, teach you how to swim, how to rescue people, how to tie a knot, and put you through radio and first-aid courses. There's no cost involved, the only cost is your time."

Six months later, more or less, and you'll be part of a crew, ready to untangle whales, rescue adrift kite surfers, struggling divers, capsized fishing boats, and even the occasional man paddling an inflatable boat with a rake aiming for Argentina.

Each volunteer is part of a crew that is on duty for a week at a time once every three or four weeks. They're on call throughout the week so can't venture far or have too many drinks - at any moment they can be thrown into an emergency and sent into a raging sea. It can seem hectic, but it's their passion. It's who they are. It's what they do.

• Ingram and Tony Weaver's 'Into a Raging Sea', a collection of NSRI rescue stories from the past 50 years, is on sale in book stores for R240.

• This article was published in The Times.

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