Lifeguard Pulls Pilot From Ocean : Rescue: An ultra-light craft plummets into the sea. A passing bicyclist swims out to save the occupant, and later calmly resumes his ride.

An off-duty lifeguard rescued a Port Hueneme man whose ultra-light plane plunged into the chilly waters off Emma Wood State Beach Saturday, authorities said.

The rescuer, Mike Peoples of Santa Barbara, swam 200 yards to reach Sam McCutchen, grabbed his coat and pulled him to the rocky beach.

McCutchen, 38, was not injured, but Peoples, 29, suffered a small cut to his left foot.

Peoples, who is a Zuma State Beach lifeguard, said he saw the plane plummet into the ocean at about 11:45 a.m. as he bicycled from Santa Barbara to Ventura on a training ride for the Los Angeles Marathon.

“It looked like he was doing a rolling maneuver, and then he went down,” Peoples said. “I got off my bike, immediately started ripping my clothes off and headed out for him.”

Ventura police said McCutchen, flying too close to the ground, came within 30 feet of Marina Park and the Ventura Pier.

“He flew right over Marina Park, over the beach about 30 to 40 feet off the ground,” said Ventura Police Officer Peggy Hidrogo.

Witnesses, including Peoples, agreed with McCutchen that nothing seemed amiss until the pilot started to climb steeply from about 40 feet above the water.

“I couldn’t pull it out of what (the craft) was doing,” McCutchen said as he shivered under the gray sky, clutching a tattered blanket around his chest. “It just winged over and went in.”

A videotape of the crash taken by Roy Chavez of Palmdale showed the red-winged craft banking sharply, when it appeared that McCutchen began to lose control. The plane’s right wing dipped into the water, and the craft cartwheeled once.

McCutchen managed to climb out before the plane sank.

Peoples, a triathlete and marathon runner, said the water temperature of about 58 degrees appeared to take its toll on the pilot.

“He was hurting when I got out to him,” he said. “He was short of breath and struggling a bit.”

“The guy probably saved his life,” said a witness, Doug Hoover of Thousand Oaks. “He’s lucky the lifeguard was riding his bike by.”

McCutchen said he has been certified to fly ultra-lights--essentially sturdy hang gliders powered by small engines--for about two years.

On Saturday, he said he headed out from Camarillo Airport at about 11 a.m. for a ride up the coast, going north past Marina Park, over the Ventura Pier and up to Emma Wood State Beach.

A photographer for a Santa Barbara television news crew filming on the pier said the plane came within 10 to 15 feet of it.

Sgt. Gary Adkinson said Ventura police considered citing McCutchen for violating flight regulations, but instead decided to turn over the department’s reports to the Federal Aviation Administration.

The FAA will review the information, which includes the video footage, and decide whether to cite McCutchen, Adkinson said.

Adkinson said that FAA regulations stipulate that an ultra-light craft must fly at least 500 feet above any populated areas.

Over open water, however, a craft can skim the surface, he said.

Adkinson also said authorities might charge McCutchen to recoup the cost of the rescue effort, which involved Ventura police officers and firefighters, sheriff’s deputies, park rangers and state lifeguards.

A sheriff’s helicopter was summoned to the scene but was not used.

Citation or not, McCutchen said he felt lucky. “I owe that guy,” he said, referring to Peoples.

As rescue personnel began to leave, Peoples donned his biking shirt, slipped on his bicycle cleats and prepared to continue his ride, seemingly unfazed by the rescue.

“I do rescues all the time,” he said. “But this is the first time I swam out to a plane crash.”