A sea tragedy was narrowly averted this week when freak weather caught a group of young people by surprise. Former local girl Lola Jordan, 14, was canoeing round the Point with companions from the James Ellis Grammar School, Harry Sykes, 17, Freda Low, 14, and Dave Fisher, 15, when the storm blew up. ‘We were paddling on an outgoing tide and we couldn’t get in,’ explains Lola, who is the daughter of Conservation Warden Richard Jordan. Lola and her schoolmates struggled against ten-foot waves and were heading out over exposed Seal Point, with two of them in the water before rescuers were alerted. They are lucky to be alive.
In an eerie echo of the past, we can reveal that the drama unfolded on exactly the same stretch of water where Richard Jordan’s elder brother James was drowned, aged 15, in 1969. On that terrible day James was crewing for Ian Christie, when a similar freak storm blew up and his boat capsized. Ian, knocked unconscious, was washed up on Seal Point, where Jack Jordan rescued him, sailing with expert precision over Seal Point as it was submerged beneath the tide. His own son James’s body was recovered several days later beyond Salt. History has gone full circle today; it was Ian Christie, now 50, who with his son Josh, 17, performed the courageous rescue of the girls today. The boys, Harry and Dave, were brought to safety by the lifeboat crew just moments after the girls had been taken on board Christie’s boat The Little Princess.
The two families, who have lived in the area for decades, with Jack Jordan presiding over the sailing club until his death this year, are unanimous in agreeing that the rift created by the terrible sorrow of that long-ago tragedy has been well and truly healed today.
The parents of the James Ellis Grammar School children have shown their gratitude by setting up a trust to fund a full-time coastguard on the Point. There are plans to start a summer school too, to bring urban children to the sea so they can learn to respect this unfamiliar environment. Josh Christie is hotly tipped as the best man to run the project.