A surfer managed to save a father and son from a dangerous rip current after a daring rescue mission.
David ‘Bean’ Coffee, 72, sprang into life on Tuesday when he heard the cries for help while on New Smyrna Beach in Florida.
According to Coffee, he had been out surfing at the time when he heard the pleas, telling Fox 19: ‘I just heard somebody yelling, screaming ‘Help! Help!’
He added: ‘When I looked down the beach, pretty far out in the water, I saw a guy floating backwards, and I saw somebody else further in.’
The boy and his father had been caught in a rip tide, as the son’s surf board snapped in half separating him from the board.
Coffee swam out to save the boy first, after he had become submerged under the tides.
David ‘Bean’ Coffee, 72, sprang into life on Tuesday when he heard the cries for help while on New Smyrna Beach in Florida
The boy and his father had been caught in a rip tide, as the son’s surf board snapped in half separating him from the board
‘He was underwater. I had to pull him up out of the water and put him on my board,’ Coffee told the outlet.
He recalled that the rescue mission was some of the toughest swimming he has had to do in his years of surfing.
But his heroic leap to action saved the two from peril, as Coffee said: ‘If I wasn’t there, they would’ve been in the Bahamas or underwater. I just happened to be there, and good thing I was.’
As he swam back to shore after the rescue mission, emergency crews arrived on the scene to aid the boy and his father.
The seasoned surfer used to work as a lifeguard around 50 years ago as a teenager in Volusia County.
‘It was definitely a life-changing experience, just to be able to actually save two lives and to where they might not have ever been found,’ Coffee said.
‘Thank God I was there.’
Coffee used to work as a lifeguard around 50 years ago as a teenager in Volusia County, and said the skills he learnt on the job helped him save the duo
Both the father and son that Coffee rescued have been reported as safe.
Rips are strong, narrow currents that flow roughly from the shoreline through the surf and out to sea.
Crucially, they never flow downwards and cannot pull swimmers underwater.
There are more than 100 deaths per year in the US attributed to rip currents, according to the United States Lifesaving Association – almost all of which are avoidable.
