Yanked like a puppet from 20 feet above Sengekontacket Pond, Nevin Sayre nearly lost his life when he hit the water in a kite-surfing accident earlier this month. 

The sailing champion and hall of fame windsurfer from Vineyard Haven had just taken a soaring leap above the pond when suddenly, his kite reversed, pulling him straight to the surface with a force greater than gravity.

“He just slammed the water so hard [and] nothing on his body was moving,” said Scott DiBiaso, one of several sailors rigging up on shore who were horrified to see the powerful kite dragging Mr. Sayre’s unconscious body away from the beach.

On the pond, kite-boarder Robert (Bear) Harding was already sailing to the rescue as Mr. DiBiaso called 911.

“I saw him crash and knew it was bad, and so I sailed over to him as quickly as possible,” Mr. Harding told the Gazette.

“Bear was instantly on him. It was probably under 45 seconds [after the crash],” Mr. DiBiaso said.

“I could see he was not doing well and was knocked unconscious from the impact,” Mr. Harding said.

Mr. Sayre by now was far across Sengekontacket, his lungs and belly filled with salty pond water that had been forced through his open mouth as the kite pulled his body downwind.

Freeing both men from their kite harnesses, Mr. Harding began giving Mr. Sayre chest compressions from behind, Heimlich-style, while treading the deep water to keep their heads above the surface as he began to swim towards the beach.

Another sailor on the beach, Quinn Keefe, struck out swimming to aid Mr. Harding, followed by Mr. DiBiaso with a surfboard borrowed from his son Ethan.

“I stripped off my harness and grabbed the floatiest surfboard he had in the car,” Mr. DiBiaso said.

Working together, the sailors were able to load Mr. Sayre onto the surfboard — no easy feat with an unresponsive, 6’2”, 200-pound athlete, made even heavier by all the water he had ingested.

“Nevin was still, for all intents and purposes, a corpse in the water,” Mr. DiBiaso said.

But as they swam him back towards shore, some 100 yards away near the bridge made famous by Jaws, Mr. Sayre began fighting for life, convulsing and spewing some of the water from his body.

“We’re yelling to him, ‘Come on, Nevin! Come on, Nevin!’” Mr. DiBiaso said.

“His eyes were rolled back in his head, so he was not responsive in that way, but we were at least encouraged [that] his body was struggling,” he said.

Mr. Sayre regained consciousness on the ambulance ride to Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, where he was loaded on a helicopter and flown to Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

“It was chilly, because they had cut off my wetsuit,” Mr. Sayre said in an interview last week.

Mr. Sayre also was fitted with a mask to aid his waterlogged lungs in breathing, but doctors found no broken bones or brain injuries from the crash.

“I’m just incredibly lucky,” he said.

After two days in the intensive care unit at Brigham and Women’s, Mr. Sayre’s lungs were drying out and hospital staff were ready to move him to a regular ward for another day or two of observation.

“They saw the latest X-ray and said ‘There’s still ocean in there, but you’re doing well,’” he said.

The hospital had no regular beds available, Mr. Sayre said, so Brigham and Women’s did something unheard-of: They released him directly from the intensive care unit.

“The nurse had to go to another floor to get discharge papers. She had never filled them out,” he said, choking up briefly as he described what happened next.

“I get emotional just saying this: I walked out of the ICU,” Mr. Sayre said.

“You could see, in the nurses — some of them were tearing up, some of them were laughing, some of them were clapping — they had never seen anyone walk out of the ICU,” he continued.

“They see people go to the wards or [the morgue],” Mr. Sayre said. “And here’s this super lucky guy who walked out.”

He’s still not sure exactly what happened above Sengekontacket Pond Oct. 18, but it likely was a combination of gusty wind and human error, Mr. Sayre told the Gazette.

“I think I have a memory of being in the air and going ‘Oh … This is not good,’ and then I have no memory until being loaded into the ambulance on a gurney,” he said.

Mr. Harding, the closest eyewitness, doesn’t believe Mr. Sayre was at fault for the accident.

“I don’t think it was operator error. A lot of times, crashes just occur,” he told he Gazette.

Mr. Sayre knows one thing for sure: He’s only alive because his fellow sailors were there — especially Mr. Harding, the only one already on the water and able to reach him quickly.

Mr. Harding’s quick response and lifesaving training made the difference between an accident and a tragedy,  Mr. Sayre said.

“He saved the day. I would not be here if not for him,” he said. 

Both Mr. DiBiaso and Mr. Harding are professional mariners aboard the 65-foot Vineyard Haven schooner Juno, and they’re certified in first aid and cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR).

But Mr. DiBiaso, Juno’s captain, said their training is no different from the CPR and first aid classes anyone can take.

For Mr. Harding, this was the first time he’d applied his life-saving skills in deep water.

“I’d never thought of giving CPR in the water, but I knew immediately that his lungs were full of water and the way he looked, I knew he needed to get pumping and to get air somehow,” he told the Gazette.

“I do know the dangers of drowning [and] the moment to act is not long. We were very fortunate that everything came together,” Mr. Harding said.

Mr. Sayre said the accident was a wake-up call for near-shore sailors like himself.

“It’s going to be my mission to make sure there’s a safety rescue board right there at that beach,” he said.

“In this case, there would have been 10 people who would have grabbed the board and gotten to Bear a lot quicker, even in street clothes,” Mr. Sayre said, adding that kite-surfers aren’t the only ones at risk.

“Think of all the people jumping off the Jaws bridge, or fishermen on the rocks who could slip,” he said.

Mr. Sayre also plans to brush up on his own emergency skills.

“It’s been a long time since I had a CPR [or] first aid course, so I am renewing those and looking for other courses,” he said.

“We all need more training, and to be like Bear,” Mr. Sayre said.

Mr. Harding said he hopes Mr. Sayre’s story will encourage more people to take first aid and CPR classes.

“It … gives your own self a little bit more confidence, and allows you to be prepared for the people around you,” he said.

The crash and rescue were a powerful reminder of life’s fragility, Mr. Harding told the Gazette.

“Moments like this make you feel grateful for our lives,” he said.

Updated to include an interview with Mr. Harding.