Dead men tell the same old tales

It all happened so fast? Seriously? Rescuers say that’s what Francie survivors winched from those horrid Kaipara Harbour seas told them.

Anguished though they were, those words carry the halitosis of stale overfamiliarity.

How it must sicken the people at Maritime New Zealand to have an eight-death teaching aid for their latest safety campaign catchlined: ‘‘Nobody is faster than disaster.’’

The first two key messages of which, you will be astonished to learn, are to wear a correct-sized lifejacket and check the marine weather.

One survivor from the overturned craft, Iripa Iripa, told his rescuers he ‘‘managed to grab a lifejacket, but it wouldn’t fit him’’.

So he wasn’t already wearing a fitting one.

Campaigners have ample evidence that the most problematic group in this respect are middle-aged men, as all the Francie occupants were.

When the Kotuku sank in Foveaux Strait claiming six lives in 2006, the police reported it went down so quickly there was ‘‘no time to get to lifejackets ...’’

When the Easy Rider also sank in Foveaux, in 2012, with eight deaths, none of the four recovered bodies was wearing a lifejacket.

There were three adult ones (too small for several of the larger people on board) and one child’s one was found snagged on wreckage.

In the wretched aftermath of the Easy Rider, the sour commentary arose that real tragedies should not be like some crappy, lazy movie sequel, telling pretty much the same story as before, with a changed cast.

That is what we have, yet again, at Kaipara.

There’s nothing – nothing – about the Francie sinking to differentiate it from the realms of tedious tragedy.

There’s not even anything particularly distinctive about the strong prospects that the Francie story is likely to carry more than one commonplace lesson.

The decision of skipper Bill Mcnatty to take clients out in those conditions will rightly be a matter of pointed inquiry.

Here, in prospect, is another lesson about the need for humility, not just from the novice, but also especially from seasoned skippers, in the face of New Zealand’s unforgiving maritime coast.

A lesson told in heartbroken terms, probably destined to join the ranks of so many others as a vaguely, but not vividly, accepted thing.

Just like the intoned reminders that authorities reckon two-thirds of recreational boaties who die might have been saved if they wore lifejackets.

Sure, we’ve all heard that before. The message seems to stay vivid for about as long as footprints in wet sand.