AN Islander who saved a French boat-builder from drowning has recounted how there was ‘no time to think’ when he pulled him from the water.
St Clement resident James Baudains (65) was on holiday in Carteret during the Easter weekend when the incident took place.
Mr Baudains, who has been sailing since he was a child and is involved with several maritime organisations, said he heard a loud ‘bang’ while moored in the marina and ran to the cockpit see what had happened.
He discovered the Frenchman, Marc Pinta, who had hit his head on part of another boat and fallen off his bike into the water.
‘He was underwater so I hauled him up to get a purchase on the pontoon and went to find help. There was no one else to be found so I lowered my transom bathing platform, deployed the boarding ladder and managed to haul him out,’ said Mr Baudains.
‘He was in a real state: disorientated, coughing up salt water he had swallowed and breathing badly. I calmed him and gave him an Easter egg to get his strength back. We then escorted him to the quay when he said he would find his way home as he lived nearby,’ he added.
In a written account of the incident, Mr Pinta said that, had it not been for Mr Baudains’s prompt actions, ‘I could not describe it to you today’.
He added: ‘I went to the pontoon where you were moored to observe from a little distance the angle of the spreaders of my boat which I had just re-masted after changing the standing rigging. The memory, among the few that I remember, is of having received a violent blow in the back of the head while approaching your boat.
‘After returning to the spot I discovered, while looking in the direction of my boat on the right, that I violently struck my head, above the left ear, [on] the starboard davit of the previous boat. I immediately became unconscious and fell into the water facing your boat.’
‘After being totally immersed, I had a tiny glimmer of consciousness that made me recognise a piece of pontoon that I was trying to reach while swallowing water in my lungs. I immediately fell back into the unconscious and remember nothing: no sight, no sound and no sensation,’ he added.
Mr Baudains said: ‘In that particular moment you just have to get on with it – you haven’t got time to think. I’m just grateful that he is alive.’
He added: ‘If it ever happened to me I would hope someone would be there.’
Mr Pinta explained that he lost consciousness again on the way home and had very little memory of the incident.
When he arrived home, his daughter called a neurosurgeon, who advised that he go to hospital for a diagnosis.
Mr Pinta said in his letter: ‘After cardiac and pulmonary cervical assessment, only a deficit of natural oxygenation of the blood appeared and a cranial trauma without lesion. Three days of external oxygen supply remedied this. The doctors confirmed to me that my stage of drowning was well advanced and that your speed in extracting me from the water was very vital to me. So thank you very much for all of this,’ he said.
Mr Baudains said that Mr Pinta’s wife and daughter came down to the marina afterwards and presented him with a jar of homemade apple jam.
‘There is no question that I’ll make contact with him when I next visit – even if it’s just for a beer,’ he added.
