Rescuers plucked five family members from the water around the capsized jet ski. Photo / Supplied
An Auckland father has pledged to take a Coastguard course after his jet ski overturned with four people on board - including his four year old daughter.
Gerald - who did not want his surname published - was giving his wife, mother and daughter a ride on a new jet ski yesterday when he came to a stop near Herald Island in Auckland's estuary waterways.
It was then a surprise wave flipped the vessel about 500m from shore.
Unable to push the jet ski the right way up, the family - who were wearing life jackets - clung to the craft as they waited for help to arrive.
Gerald's father and another older daughter were also left stranded in a dinghy a few hundred metres away, while a young son who had been on the dinghy jumped off and swam to the jet ski to try and help.
Eventually, a passing yacht came to their rescue about 15 minutes later.
Gerald said his family didn't feel in danger during the ordeal, apart from his 4-year-old daughter becoming scared and cold.
"Just the little one was crying a bit, but everyone else was OK, we were just calmly waiting," he said.
However, Ramon Saxon - who spotted the overturned jet ski while sailing with friends from Westhaven Marina to The Riverhead pub for dinner - said the family were "shaken up" by the time he arrived.
"I got to the family probably just in time as the mother, grandmother, and little 4-year-old looked to be in severe shock," he said.
"When pulling them into the boat you could see the fear pouring out of them and just happy someone had come along when they did, the little girl had swallowed a lot of water."
Saxon and his friends brought everyone on board their yacht and wrapped them in blankets.
The youngest girl was "pale" and "shivering", while Gerald's wife looked "gobsmacked", he said.
He also helped Gerald right the jet ski, before sailing to the jetty on Herald Island where they met a Coastguard launch that had been sent to help.
Coastguard Duty Officer Hemi Manaena said a person from the shore first raised the alarm about the incident, leading Coastguard to put out a distress call before sending its own boat to help.
The Coastguard team met the family at the Herald Island jetty, wrapped them in blankets and reassured them, before dropping them off to Greenhithe where they had originally launched from.
Manaena praised them for all wearing new lifejackets.
"This is a brilliant example where - if not for the life jackets - we may have been dealing with something much more serious," he said.
However, he encouraged people with little experience on the water to first contact Coastguard because it offered a range of boating education tools, including skippers' day courses.
These were great whether people planned to use jet skis, kayaks or larger boats, he said. It was also important to have communication equipment on board.
"Had they had a VHF radio, they could have radioed Coastguard direct," he said.
As a yachtsman and volunteer lifesaver at Bethells Beach, Saxon said he was passionate about water safety and hoped the incident would serve as a reminder to others about how quickly things can go wrong.
He said he had nothing against Gerald, but thought he "had no clue" to risk his family's safety by taking them all out on the water at once when he was so inexperienced.
This included having the 4-year-old girl and older woman on the jet ski at once, while leaving other family members in the nearby dinghy when they didn't know how to operate it. Most of the family looked like they didn't know how to swim as well, he said.
Saxon also pointed out the family weren't using lifejackets that had head rests to ensure people do not lie face down in the water face in incidents where they hit their heads and are knocked unconscious.
"People please, have some common sense, this could have gone horribly wrong," he said in a Facebook post.
However, Gerald said everyone in his family knew how to swim apart from his parents, who were visiting from overseas.
He thanked Saxon and his friends for rescuing his family and promised he would be back out on the water soon.
But not with his whole family at once and not before he took one of the Coastguard boating education courses, he said.
"We really want to thank [Saxon and his friends] for helping us," he said.