Musselroe Bay resident Tim Niekamp had an unexpected evening on Sunday night.
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About 8.30pm, the retiree received a call asking him to go out and rescue two tourists who were stranded on a spit of beach.
The pair were returning from Swan Island in their own boat, which they had taken with them on a trip to the bay.
Mr Niekamp said the steering on the boat broke, and the two men were carried down the channel by the current onto rocks.
They were able to rock the boat off the rocks, but the action damaged the motor.
They then rowed the boat towards land, but became stranded on the sandy bar.
After they called Triple 0, Mr Niekamp was contacted and he volunteered to head across in the darkness to rescue the stranded campers in his recreational boat.
“It was only a couple of hundred metres; it was just a matter of getting them back across to this side so they could stay in their camp for the night,” he said.
“They hadn’t been here before so they didn’t really know the area, and the bay has got that much freshwater in it that it’s just brown – you can’t see any objects in there.”
The boat is still stranded on the beach, and Mr Niekamp plans to tow is in at the next high tide, most likely about 5am Monday.
He said it’s not the first time something like that has happened at Musselroe Bay, and that similar incidents occur “quite often."
Tasmania Police have praised the members of the public who assisted in rescuing the campers.
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