Details have emerged of a dramatic rescue in Western Australia’s Pilbara, with a 28-year-old man finding himself stranded on a small island after his dinghy broke its anchor while he was snorkelling.
WA Police released details of the rescue, which began on Friday, April 17, when the alarm was raised by concerned family members who hadn’t heard from the man after he was due to return from a solo boating and camping trip to Picard Island in a 3.3-metre inflatable dinghy.
Picard Island is off the coast from Point Samson, east of Karratha, and the historic ghost town of Cossack.
The region is popular for fishers, but the tides are notoriously large, often swinging from a low of 1 metre to a high of more than 5 metres in the space of five or six hours.
Police were joined by Volunteer Marine Rescue units and private vessels as they scoured the coast for the man, before he was later spotted by officers on board a charter flight.
The man was in knee-deep water on a remote part of Picard Island and a commercial fishing boat picked him up to take him to Point Samson boat ramp. Aside from severe dehydration, the man was uninjured.
The man had been snorkelling about 5 kilometres from Picard Island when his boat broke anchor, leaving him stranded in the ocean.
He tried to swim to another nearby island, and spent several hours in the water before making it back to Picard Island, where he waited until help arrived.
