A wave pushed the boat on to a reef, capsizing it and throwing the three people into the water.
Nukutaurua Rd resident Sophie Dodd said she answered a knock at her door about 10am yesterday to the young girl who was wearing a life jacket and dripping wet. She had swam 10m to shore, walked along the reef and ran for about 30 minutes to Ms Dodd's house to get help.
"She was cold and wet. She said that they'd had an accident and she needed to use the phone. She was very strong and brave for a young girl."
The girl told Ms Dodd a wave had upturned the boat.
When she set out from the reef, her father had been performing CPR on the elderly man.
Ms Dodd gave her a change of clothes and dialled 111.
The elderly man had since died and the girl's father was "in shock," Ms Dodd said.
Police launched a rescue operation involving local boats, the coastguard, the Gisborne ECT Rescue Helicopter and the Hawke's Bay Lowe Corporation Rescue Helicopter, but nobody was airlifted to hospital.
Mr Bates confirmed the girl was wearing a life jacket when the accident happened, but police were unsure about her father or the elderly man.
Ms Dodd said residents were still trying to retrieve the boat from the reef yesterday afternoon.
"There was this boat, sitting and riding the waves as if nothing had happened."
The elderly man's name will not be released until his family have been notified.
His death has been referred to the coroner.
Police are investigating how the accident happened.
In another fatal boating accident in Mahia last month, father and digger operator Malcolm Blake, 57, died after the boat he was skippering capsized in rough seas off the Mahia Peninsula, throwing him and three others into the sea.
Mr Blake was checking cray fish pots with a married couple and their teenage son. None of the boat occupants were wearing life jackets, although there were two onboard.
They managed to swim to shore at the edge of a cliff at the end of Kinikini Rd, near Mahia township, where Mr Blake died. The teenage boy clambered up a 30m cliff face and hiked 2km to get help.
A Haumoana man was also airlifted by the Lowe Corporation Rescue Helicopter to Hawke's Bay Hospital last month after a boat propeller severed an artery in his leg during a launching at Waimarama Beach.
Mr Bates said yesterday's accident was "another reminder you've got to be very careful in seas".
"[Mahia] is a small community and these things do have a big impact."
