Out in the churning blue, a paraglider and its stricken pilot slipped quietly into the ocean. The man got clear of his harness, but the large swell pushed his parachute-like wing – and him – towards the rocks. 

Within minutes his legs had become badly entangled in the glider’s lines, leaving him effectively tied to the rocks, to be repeatedly pounded by the big seas.

He took on water and quickly grew exhausted. His legs were covered in cuts and ligature marks. His position was so treacherous that minutes later, when rescuers reached him and began attempts to cut him free, he told them to save themselves. 

“Give me the knife and get out of here,” he said. 

The man’s life or death predicament – and the white-knuckle retrieval that followed – was highlighted on Thursday when members of Helensburgh-Stanwell Park Surf Life Saving Club were awarded Life Saving NSW’s Rescue of the Month. 

Club members Nick Lowe and Edward White initially tried to reach the man using an inflatable rescue boat, before the closeness of the rocks forced them to retreat. 

With 17-year-old club volunteer Lochleigh Thomson, they then climbed over the treacherous rocks to reach the man, with Lochleigh having borrowed a knife from a nearby fisherman and Nick carying a pair of scissors from the clubhouse. 

They reached the pilot and found him barely able to talk or stand as the painstaking process of cutting the lines got underway. 

“He was going into shock. If we hadn’t have got there he probably would have lost all of his energy and got smashed up on the rocks and drowned,” said Nick, 25.

“I went in with the scissors. They were helpful with some of the ropes because they were special bandage scissors, and could get between his skin and the rope.”

But the final few lines were thicker. There were 10 or 15 to cut through in total, and cutting had to stop whenever a big wave crashed over the shoulder-high rocks.  

Nick used the knife to cut through the tougher lines, with Lochleigh alerting him to stop and brace whenever a large wave approached.

“When I was about to cut his last rope I heard Lochleigh say there was a wave coming, but I just wanted to get him out of there,” Nick said. “I fell back with the wave and the knife cut my finger a little bit. I was just thinking, ‘I’ve got to get him out of here otherwise he might not make it’.”

Once freed, the man took refuge on a safer section of rock before the volunteers helped him to the beach, where he was treated by other surf lifesavers and paramedics.