ZLondon: A 10-year-old Indian-origin boy, who was swept out to sea during a family trip to the beach in northern England, has spoken about how he survived using the floating advice he picked up on a television documentary show.
Ravi Saini was able to battle the waves for more than an hour and even earned praise from the rescuers who found him on his back, with his arms and legs spread, shouting for help in the water near Scarborough, on the North Sea coast, July 31.
As someone who takes weekly swimming lessons and is a fan of the BBC documentary ‘Saving Lives at Sea’, Ravi says that is where he saw the ‘Float to Live’ technique of lying on your back, staying calm and spreading out like a starfish.
“I felt like ‘yeah I finally got a second chance to live’,” said Ravi, in reference to his rescue.
The schoolboy from Leeds had been at the beach in South Bay with his father, Nathu Ram, 37, his mother, Puspa Devi, 34, and his nine-year-old sister, Muskan. He went into the water with his father and sister when he suddenly realised he was out of his depth.
“I realised I was floating and I was like ‘help me, help me’. My dad tried to come but the water was higher than him,” he recalled.
“I was petrified and I thought that this was the end of my life,” he added.
After what felt like ‘five hours’ at sea, he said he heard the lifeboat’s engine approaching.
He returned to thank the lifeboat crew at Scarborough again this week for saving him and toured the town’s Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) base.
PTI