Seven people have been forced to jump overboard to escape a boat fire on South Australia's Fleurieu Peninsula.
The South Australian Metropolitan Fire Service (MFS) said firefighters responded to a boat fire at Encounter Bay off the coast of Victor Harbor just after 9:00am.
Seven people were on board the boat and tried to extinguish the fire before jumping overboard.
SA Police said one man was taken to hospital for treatment of minor burns and two children were also treated at hospital for smoke inhalation.
The other people on board were treated at the scene by paramedics, police said.
The MFS said the vessel drifted onto the rocks at the Bluff, where MFS crews were able to tie it down.
There was about 200 litres of fuel in the boat tank which had to burn off before firefighters could control the blaze, the MFS said.
The MFS said the fire was extinguished in about 25 minutes and the boat was completely destroyed, causing $70,000 of damage.
Port Elliott's Dave Waller was one of the first on the scene to help out.
He said he was out catching crayfish and returning from Seal Rock when one of his crew spotted smoke from the fire.
"I said 'yeah, that looks pretty serious' [and] raced over towards them," he said.
"There were two on the front of the boat. Got fairly close. Was a bit worried it was going to go bang, but got them to swim to us and then picked another two up out of the water."
'Thank God there were no deaths'
Mr Waller said another dinghy that was close by picked up two of the children that had jumped overboard.
He said they then picked up another person floating in the water and put everybody on his boat and brought them back.
"They were pretty shook up, particularly the mother of them," he said.
"I suppose it's just being in the right place at the right time and hopefully we've saved five or six deaths which is a bit unheard of around here."
He said he was glad that something more serious was avoided and that the people involved were visibly "very upset and scared".
"They were very thankful. They just swam towards the boat and we just dragged them in," he said.
"We were just able to pull them straight in and get them onto something solid and out of the water.
"Thank God there were no deaths, that's all I'll say. There were two males on the boat that pretty well refused to jump off even though the thing was going up in smoke.
"We avoided something very, very serious."
'We were expecting it to explode'
John Harris, who was also on Mr Waller's boat, said they expected the boat to explode, but luckily it did not.
"There was a lot of black smoke just pouring straight up. And I said 'that's not right — there's oil and fuel on fire there'," he said.
"There were two gentlemen that refused to get out of the boat and we said 'jump in the water, quickly, get off the boat'.
"We were expecting it to explode, but it didn't, it just kept burning.
"If they were further out, they were in a lot of trouble. Anything could have happened out there."
He said getting to them as quickly as they did was "probably a good thing".
"One of the fellas I pulled out of the water, all of his eyebrows were singed and his hair was singed," he said.
"And when we got the mother on board I noticed all her hair was singed as well. Quite a lot of heat on the boat."
