British woman left clinging to a buoy in the sea off the Costa del Sol: 'I really thought I was going to drown'

The lives of Victoria and Alejandro crossed paths almost four years ago on Pedregalejo beach in Malaga. That afternoon she went into the water to take a "quick dip," but the sea, which was calm on the surface, changed in the blink of an eye after she had only been swimming for a few minutes. She tried to get out again and again, but the rough waves kept dragging her back in. "I realised that I was running out of strength and that I could drown," she recalls. So she spent several hours clinging to a buoy off the jetty, thinking that this would be her "end."

The first calls to the emergency services were made at around eight in the evening on 1 October. Night had begun to fall, with the sea becoming increasingly rough. Victoria remembers how her body became completely numb from the cold. "I was so frozen that I could not think clearly, my mind was completely gone," she says. She also recalls that the jetty was filled with people who kept telling her not to let go of the buoy and that they wouldn't take long to reach her and rescue her. Still, it seemed like an eternity to her.

"I remember that they were like distant voices. At that point I could only think about my family and my boyfriend because I thought I was going to drown," she says. Then, in the middle of all that darkness, she could just make out the orange patrol boat of the Spain's Salvamento Marítimo maritime rescue service. That was the night that Victoria met Alejandro, the skipper of the Salvamar Alnitak who coordinated her rescue.

Almost four years later, SUR has brought them together again on the same beach in Pedregalejo because, despite the passage of time, neither of them had forgotten the other. Victoria greets him with a "my hero!", which provokes immediate laughter from Alejandro as he tries to play down the compliment. "I just did what had to be done," he replies. Then they both embrace each other as friends do when they haven't seen each other for years. With emotions running high, they both relive that agonising rescue that, luckily, was just a nasty scare, no harm done. "I'm remembering everything, in this same place, and I still have the same feeling as on that day... I can't believe I'm still alive," she says.

As the skipper of the patrol boat recalls, the crew left the port as soon as they received the call to action from the despatch centre at Tarifa, "with the engines still cold because there was no time to lose". It was a particularly complicated emergency, according to Alejandro, due to the short distance between the buoy to which the swimmer was clinging and the jetty itself. "The sea was very rough and the location was very bad because it was very shallow; there was a risk that the boat would hit the rocks," he says.

"When I saw the boat it was a huge relief, I thought I was hallucinating," says Victoria. Alejandro describes how they brought the patrol boat as close as possible to the swimmer and then they threw her a lifebelt so she could catch hold of it. However, she was so soaked through and weakened from the cold that she was unable to move. "That first attempt didn't work because she was just clinging to the buoy for dear life and had no strength... and we had to move away because the water was dragging us towards the jetty," he says.

Another attempt was required and fortunately it was met with success. "One of the rescue team swung out beyond the boat with a safety harness attached and managed to hook Victoria, and then we were able to pull her on board," explains the skipper. He certainly remembers the swimmer being very hypothermic and completely numb but, on the way back to Muelle Uno where a mobile ICU medical unit was waiting for her, she began to pull round. "I was totally in shock, I became conscious when I saw the lights from the port; I could only thank them."

Ever since Victoria settled in Malaga almost a decade ago (she is originally from Liverpool), the sea has been one of her main passions. As this British woman who works as a lawyer on the Costa del Sol explains, swimming is her therapy that she tries to immerse herself in whenever she has the chance: "It is my way of switching off." That afternoon was no exception. Thankfully, despite giving herself a big fright, she has not stopped pursuing her hobby: "I learned to live with what happened because I cannot live without swimming."

She does, however, add that she takes many more "precautions" now than she did back then. She always checks the weather forecast and dives into the water with goggles and flippers. She also tries to go to the beach in the morning so that she has enough time for a decent swim without getting caught in the dark. "Now I feel much more in touch with the sea because I am also much more aware of the dangers... I learned that you shouldn't be overconfident, that it can change in an instant."

Although she did not stop thanking the crew for saving her life on the way to Muelle Uno, for Victoria it was not enough. "She called us several times because she wanted to give us something, but we insisted that we do not accept gifts because we were only doing what we had to do," explains Alejandro. Victoria added: "I wanted to make a donation because they had to jump into action because of me, but they would not let me."

Despite the refusal, she did not give up. At that time she was learning to play the guitar and, after a few weeks, she surprised the rescue crew with an audio file. It was a song that she had composed, which she had recorded with her singing while playing her guitar. "It was the least I could do because I thought I was gonna die until they arrived." The song title is 'La chica de la boya' (The Girl on the Buoy) and it is dedicated to maritime rescue. "Thanks to you I have more time on earth to enjoy," is one line in the lyrics.

After more than three decades at the helm of the Salvamar Alnitak skipper Alejandro was reunited with swimmer Victoria, whom he had rescued nearly four years ago, literally less than a week before his retirement. Despite the countless emergencies he has responded to and been involved in, he has rarely had the opportunity to meet up again with the people he has saved.