How $10 air mattresses saved two mates from death in Bass Strait TWO $10 inflatable pool toys have saved the lives of two men whose light plane crashed into the icy waters of Bass Strait on Monday. Pilot Shayd Hector and his passenger, Joel Nelson, were immersed for 2½ hours in 13°C water off Tasmania's north coast before being rescued by police. They were suffering cuts, bruises and hypothermia, but survived their ordeal thanks to the children's lilos purchased at Kmart hours before their ill-fated flight. Acting Sergeant Matt ­Massie, of Flinders Island police, said the men had a personal locator beacon and were wearing inflatable life vests when they were found on Monday. They had managed to semi-inflate the toy mattresses, which had given them extra buoyancy and lifted them slightly out of the water. "They'd inflated these lime-green lilos once they'd got clear of the aircraft, got some wind into them, and they were keeping them afloat," Acting Sgt Massie said. They'd also managed to tether themselves together with their life vests. Plane crash survivors Joel Nelson and Shayd Hector. The men, both 23, were in Mr Hector's Thruster Ultralight T-500 aircraft, flying ­between Tasmania and their home town of Newcastle, when the engine failed. Mr Hector told 3AW he didn't think the pair would ­survive when the engine coughed and finally stalled, and they crashed down into Bass Strait 11 nautical miles northeast of Waterhouse ­Island. The plane sank in 30 seconds. We didn't know if we were going to make it. We were nearly at the point of giving up in a way," Mr Hector said. We were bleeding and there was blood on the mattresses (lilos). We were pretty paranoid knowing it's a shark-infested area among the ­islands. A map of the crash site in Bass Strait. Mr Hector told the Herald Sun last night they had trouble accessing the plane's life raft. We had a life raft in the bottom of the plane, but the way it landed, we couldn't ­access it. So we just inflated the air mattresses to get us out of the water until we could be ­rescued," Mr Hector said. The whole plane smashed in around us and flipped upside down. I purposely told Joel to have doors open, seat belts off and EPIRB in hand. Mr Nelson said he was grateful his mate was a good pilot, but he was in no hurry to fly over water again. "I'm just happy I'm alive and really happy the rescue team came and saved us," he said. The men had flown into Tasmania on a Qantas flight on Monday morning, and ­driven to the coastal town of Bridport to collect the $28,000 ultralight. Shayd Hector and Joel Nelson arrive at hospital. Picture: Ross Marsden Source: News Limited Mr Hector, a chef who had been working in Tasmania for three years, had left the plane behind when he returned to Newcastle. His flight instructor, ­Eugene Reid - who had taught him to fly during the past three years from a nearby landing strip - said he spoke to the men when they arrived in Tasmania and reminded them to buy the lilos. Mr Reid said it was possible to insert lilos into the wings of the lightweight Thruster ­aircraft, and he had discussed it several times with Mr Hector before his flight. "I used to hear him on the radio just about every day up there practising," he said. He's a good pilot. We'd discussed purchasing the lilos to put into the wings. Obviously, they took the lilos into the aircraft. Mr Reid said it appeared that when the engine started to stall, Mr Hector had dropped the plane down to just 1m above the waves and tried to nurse it along. "He was giving it little bursts of power and they managed to keep going like that for eight minutes," he said. The pair also notified authorities, who activated an ­immediate search for them, before their plane finally ditched at 3pm on Monday. The two men were winched to the helicopter, as the police rescue boat looked on. Acting Sgt Massie and First-Class Constable Nick East, on duty in the Furneaux group of islands an hour away, steered the police boat, Protector 4, ­toward the area. A military aircraft and a commercial Sharp Airlines flight helped guide them to the pair, who were bobbing around on the icy waves. "The pilot told us he'd ­gotten clear and he'd pulled his passenger through the windscreen," Acting Sgt Massie said. We'd had a degree of difficulty finding them as they were not picking up on our ­radar. We rescued the passenger first. He said to us, 'Hurry up and get me out of here'. We got them on board and tried to warm them up. The two officers handed over their own clothes to the freezing pair, leaving Const. East in his singlet and trousers. The police then borrowed a small dinghy from a yacht that had come to assist, put the men in the dinghy and pushed them out off the back of the police boat, to allow a rescue helicopter to get in close to winch them to safety. The men spent the night in the Launceston General Hospital, but were released yesterday and reunited with their families in Newcastle.