On his first day at Ocean Ecoventures whale watching, Gary Sutton and several coworkers went on a spontaneous outing, hearing about orcas near Cowichan Bay.

On their way back to the marina on Thursday, they saw a boat doing circles at full speed.

“It was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen out there,” Sutton told CTV News.

The captain and his colleagues jumped into full rescue mode after they spotted three people in the water. The family later told them the accident happened when one of the men bumped the throttle by mistake.

The owner of Ocean Ecoventures Simon Pidcock says, “We went first for the man and who was holding his two-year-old boy out of the water treading water.”

Once they pulled the pair from the frigid waters, they heard faint yelling. They quickly realized it was a second man in the water. He was barely visible, with only his face showing.

Rescuers jumped in the water and after several tries, decided to put a line around him. They then pulled the man to safety.

But the ordeal wasn’t over yet. There was a five-year-old girl aboard the aluminum boat doing donuts in the water nearby.

Pidcock says she was crouched in a corner, and terrified. The Good Samaritans yelled for her to pull the red cord, often called a kill cord. Pulling the cord would stop the boat.

Eventually the scared little girl was able to get to the kill cord and bring the boat to a stop.

The girl, her little brother, dad and uncle were taken to hospital. All are expected to be OK. The kids were in lifejackets, the adults weren’t. The kids’ mom who didn’t want to be identified, told CTV News if the men had the safety vests on with the ignition kill cord attached, the accident may never have happened. She also called the rescuers heroes.

The crew members from Ocean Ecoventures say they were lucky to be in the right spot at the right time. They say if they had been just a few minutes late, things could’ve turned out much differently.

Sutton says he’ll never forget the little girl telling him, “I love my brother so much and I thought I was going to watch him die.”

He says it’s a sobering reminder of why safety precautions are so important.