Rescue before breakfast: Tuross Head Marine Rescue volunteer trio saving lives and flipping eggs

They definitely weren't expecting to be called out onto the water for one of the most technically challenging rescue missions they've faced.

Tuross Head Marine Rescue run an annual Australia Day fundraiser breakfast at One Tree Lookout in Tuross Head.

Volunteer trio Darren Nicholls, Geoff Starkey and Harley Moss arrived at 6:30am to aid with the organisation.

Also at about 6:30am, an open boat crossing the sand bar at Moruya hit a wave, lifting the nose of the boat and tipping the driver backwards into the water. After the wave, the boat corrected and continued to power on, leaving the boatman behind. He inflated his life jacket and was picked up by a nearby fishing boat.

The driver-less boat spinning wildly around in the water poses a severe risk to other boaters. That's when Marine Rescue were called in.

At 7am, with the barbeques still warming up, Marine Rescue received a call from NSW Maritime.

"Normally we wouldn't recover the boat," Mr Moss said. "We'd leave it, but when it becomes a risk to life and limb we obviously have to do something about it."

READ MORE: GALLERY: Australia Day Breakfast at Tuross Head

"It's our job to stop it.

"It's a real difficult thing to do.

"We're not allowed to get in the boat because it's too dangerous transferring from our boat to his boat.

"You don't know where the boats gonna go - it could take off in this direction or that direction. So how do you stop it?

"We have to work out how we can stop this boat from whistling around the ocean without causing damage to our boat and to our crew.

The crew decided to tie a fender - a plastic floating buoy typically used to absorb the impact of a boat against a jetty - on both ends of a piece of rope about five metres long and throw it in front of the spinning boat.

"The theory is that the boat will drive over the top of the rope, catch the rope around the propeller, causing the engine to stall."

However, because the boat was spinning around in a circle, creating thrust all the time, it kept pushing the rope away. It was difficult for the team to predict where the boat would move to throw the fender-line directly in front of it's path.

READ MORE: Resolved to read more books in 2022? Nice idea, but where do you start? Books you should read in 2022

Eventually, after deploying another fender-tied line, the team were able to stall the propeller and stop the boat.

Mr Nicholls said every rescue gave him a lot of satisfaction to keep helping out.

By 9am, the trio had returned to One Tree Lookout, replacing rope-fenders for barbeque tongs and spatulas, integrating seamlessly back into the tireless work of volunteering.

The general public, as a sausage is placed on the bread in their hand, and the onion delicately balanced on top, are non the wiser of the local heroes behind the tongs, and just how busy their morning had been.

"The only way that we survive to keep helping people is this fundraising to put fuel into our vessels," Mr Moss said.

"It's all for the community - keeping all of us safe."

"We do what we do to keep our lives safe and the lives of the general public safe and that's the only reason we'll do boat salvages," mr Moss said. "We're not a boat salvage company, we're a lifesaving company."