MINUTES after leaving an RNLI first aid class, lifeboatman Davie Urquhart found himself suddenly having to use his newly-learned skills.
Yesterday, the 32-year-old deputy coxwain of the Portree lifeboat on Skye was hailed a hero for his daring rescue of a drowning man in the local harbour.
Mr Urquhart had just left the Friday night session of the RNLI's intensive two-week first-aid course in Portree and went into the Pier Hotel for a drink on his way home. However, no sooner had he crossed the threshold than a young lad dashed into the hotel, shouting: ''Quick, quick... someone is drowning''.
He said yesterday: ''I sprinted off into the darkness and down the slipway. I could just make out the back of a man's head in the water. He was face down in the classic spreadeagled position.
''When I reached him, I spun him over on his back and started swimming with him back to the slipway. There was not a flicker of life in him, and quite frankly I thought I was bringing ashore a dead body.''
But as his fellow crewmen and police manhandled the 68-year-old Englishman out of the lifeboatman's grasp and on to the shore his heart started beating again.
Mr Urquhart and his colleagues used their resuscitation skills and brought the man, who is not being named, back from the dead. He was taken by ambulance to hospital in Broadford, but was released yesterday.
Pier Hotel boss Harry Dick said: ''Davie's a brave lad and certainly deserves some sort of recognition.. That was the second rescue in a week in which he was involved.
''Last weekend he brought ashore a local youngster who fell off a rope swing and plunged 30ft on to a rock ending up half in the sea.''
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