Group spokesman Peter Huggins, who described the waves as the ‘biggest I have been out in’, said the rescue started with an 8.30am phone call to the radio tower from two men on the shore who had noticed the three in the water near Alkimos Reef.
Two men and a woman had ridden a jet ski out to do some bodyboarding when they got into difficulty and set off an EPIRB.
‘The crew of Green 2 did a great job of getting the first person on board before being directed by the people on shore to the other two in the water,’ he said.
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READ NOW‘We stood by in Green 1 until all were on board and then went out to see if we could reach the jet ski.
‘It was right at the point where the biggest waves were breaking, so no chance of recovery at that time.’
He said the woman, who was taken to Joondalup Health Campus, had injured her arm after being caught up in the anchor line of the jet ski.
In a separate incident the same day, a crew from Two Rocks Volunteer Marine Rescue Group responded after 7am to a phone call for help from three fishermen 6.5km off Two Rocks.
Group commander David Haynes said the skipper had broken his arm when the boat was flung in the air by a big wave.
‘He was incapacitated and the two passengers were non-boaties so Guardian 1 shepherded them back in,’ he said. ‘With the big swell conditions, it was very tricky.
‘They were the sort of conditions you get in any water that is not really deep and waves can rear up out of nowhere, as the people rescued by Whitfords found because they ended up in the water.’