A 60-year-old West Hawaii man survived relatively unscathed after a humpback whale flipped the one-man outrigger canoe he was paddling Tuesday afternoon, tossing him into the water and stranding him a quarter-mile out from the Outrigger Kana­loa at Kona condominium resort.

The captain of a tour boat found the man 100 yards offshore in Keau­hou Bay and helped him aboard the boat, the Fire Department said.

The man received a superficial scratch to his arm from his broken canoe and did not require medical attention, said the Hawaii County Fire Department, which received the call at 2:16 p.m.

Fire Capt. Shawn Naka­kura said the tour boat crew helped the man onto another vessel, which brought the man and his 20-foot canoe to shore.

"This is the whale season, and we’ve gotten calls for possible boats flipped by whales but they haven’t actually turned out to be one," he said. "This is my first experience. I think it’s rather uncommon."

Sherri Carney, 62, an avid paddler, said she and her daughter had stopped at a lookout above Keau­hou Bay to see whether they could spot any whales using binoculars.

Carney said the paddler stopped when he saw the whale but that it kept coming closer to the canoe.

"I was like, ‘Oh my gosh,’" she said. "The whale flipped his tail up and knocked him over! … He didn’t turn his boat back over. I said, ‘This is not good.’"

She said she drove to the shoreline and found the owner of a surfing school, and the two got into his motorboat and raced out to the paddler. The tour boat crew transferred him to their boat, and they brought him and his broken Fiberglas canoe to shore.

She wrapped her shirt around his arms, which were bleeding from cuts, but he was otherwise fine, Carney said.

"He kept his composure," she said. "He was shaken up when it happened, but he was smart enough to swim away from the (canoe) because the whale could have come back and tried to hit it again."

He did the right thing to grab his paddle and swim away, she said.