A FATHER has spoken about the terrifying moments when he fought to save his 15-year-old son from being swept out to sea off the coast at Filey.

“At one point we accepted that we were going to die,” said the 40-year-old, who was holidaying at a caravan site at Primrose Valley, just south of Filey Brigg, when he and his son decided to go for a swim.

It was about 4.30pm on Saturday.

The weather was OK. “Although it was a bit choppy and the waves were quite big,” the father said.

He and his son began paddling about in the water a few metres offshore. Another, older man was nearby, with his daughter, who started shouting ‘Help! Help!’” 

At first he thought the man was joking – but then realised he was deadly serious.

He left his son and swam out towards the man. He began helping him towards the shore, while the man’s daughter swam back to the beach to alert the coastguard.

But then he heard his son screaming for help.

“He had been caught in a riptide and was being dragged out to sea,” he said.

He had no choice but to leave the man he’d been helping, and swim out to try to help his own son.

“I apologised to him, and said ‘I have to go and get my son’” he said. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”

He began trying to help his son back to shore. But they were fighting the current, and the water was cold. He didn’t realise it at the time, but he was developing hypothermia.

As they struggled, he could still hear the other man calling for help as he was swept further out to sea. “It was harrowing,” he said.

He managed to take one of his flip-flops off, and wore it on his hand, to try to get more traction in the water as he struggled back towards land. It was then, as they seemed to make no progress against the current, that both father and son thought they were going to die.

But somehow the father, from near Huddersfield, managed to get the back far enough so that his toes could just touch the seabed.

“I had hypothermia by this time, and apparently I was running on pure adrenalin,” he said.

He doesn’t remember much more, until he woke up in hospital in Scarborough.

A man hauled the fatherr and son out of the sea and gave CPR, and the father was taken to Scarborough hospital by air ambulance, and his son by land ambulance.

An RNLI lifeboat was able to rescue the second man. “He was nearly a mile out by the time they got to him,” said the father, who managed to speak to the man in hospital, and apologised again for having to leave him.

The incident came just over a month after a 55-year-old man died after getting into difficulties in the sea at Reighton, south of Filey.