Two young paddle boarders help rescue couple stranded on rocks in Marbella

Two young paddle surfers have rescued a couple of tourists who had become trapped on rocks by a fierce current in the sea off a Marbella beach.

After hearing their distress calls, Freddie and Jorge, 22 and 17 years old, grabbed their boards and jumped into the ocean. "I thought I heards someone calling for help; I looked around and saw that a few metres away there were three people stranded on some rocks," one of the brave paddle surfers said.

The incident, which happened at the beginning of last week on Faro beach in Marbella, escalated when the sea, which was initially calm, suddenly became "very choppy".

"As soon as I realised what was happening, I went to them," Freddie said. When he got closer he found that the man and the woman could not move forward due to the force of the current, which had left them trapped on the rocks.

A little further away, was their daughter, who was extremely anxious state as she watched her parents in distress. "The three of them were very nervous, almost on the verge of tears," Jorge said.

The first thing Freddie did was to try to get the man and woman to grab on to his paddle board, so that they would at least have a hold and prevent them from drowning. "I couldn't handle the two of them, and at that point I called my friend (Jorge)," he said. They reassured the family while they waited for a lifeguard to arrive.

They don't know how long it took, although Jorge pointed out that everything happened in a matter of ten or 15 minutes. "The shore was around 30 metres away, but the truth is that the choppy sea made it very difficult to act," he said.

Jorge battled the dangerous conditions and managed to paddle the man to safety on his board. Then as he turned to go back to help Freddie who was reassuring the woman, he noticed that the lifeguards were carrying her to safety.

Freddie and Jorge use their summers to save up some money by working as helpers for Nalusur, an adventure activities company on the Costa del Sol, so they were prepared to intervene in such a situation. "We saw them in danger and thought of nothing else but helping them; we did a risk assessment and went straight to rescue them, without worrying about it or ourselves," they said.

Jorge is one year away from finishing high school, while Freddie is studying in Granada. The two young men share a common passion for the sea and for sports. And now, they are also united by the satisfaction of helping save two lives.