Man overboard!

Headed to Sandy Pt over the weekend with Dad. Also coming a long were Les and Daniel together with their 4.8m savage "Ranger" and John and Aaron with their small 3.2m (Approx???) "Dolphin" - A boat probably not suited to anything bigger than a farmyard dam. Another post that isn't about kayaking, but is about the dangers of the deep!
Saturday morning greeted us with typical Shallow Inlet conditions - Blowing a gale! We persisted with the 6 foot reef landing wrasse (In their millions), grass whiting and trevally - Nothing decent and no king george whiting. Headed back up to the channel and found Les and Daniel with a 45cm pinkie and John and Aaron with a nice 1m gummy. As we had caught no KGW we decided to try for these species and anchored up about 100m away from them. 15 unsuccessful minutes into our session, we heard a yell and looked over to see John and Aaron in the water and their boat capsized - It had started taking on water and flipped with the wind and waves. Hurriedly we pulled up anchor and ripped the rods out of the water and motored over. Les and Daniel were first on the scene and got Aaron aboard their boat. We pulled in John but couldn't get close to the upturned boat due to the howling gale and by now large waves. Next thing I know John had grabbed a rope and jumped back in the water - Still fully clothed! He tied the rope to his boat eventually but couldn't get to his anchor rope (Anchor was still on the bottom) to cut it. After a couple of minutes Les and Daniel picked him up, and by now he looked completely exhausted. We attempted to tow his boat in a few times but his anchor was holding fast. In the end it came free and we drove it back in. Our loaded boat now had almost no steering and I had to drive with the motor fully locked right to crab in against the wind. Our top speed was 3.8km/hr! John had lost 5 rods, flares, esky and much more, but most importantly his personal best gummy shark! He washed the boat with fresh water, used about 10 litres of WD40 on the motor and got it started, but I think that it has definitely shortened the lifespan of the engine!
We did catch about 60 mullet the next day (Some kept for bait for winter gummies in WP), a couple of pinkies and some trevally, but the capsizing was definitely the story of the trip!