The brave rescuers from all walks of life
FROM PAGE 13
‘‘I’m a keen fisherman with my own boat, but also I’ve been fortunate enough to take my training and experiences all around the globe – for me, it’s about putting some of that stuff to good use,’’ Kara says.
‘‘We’ve got a bank manager who’s our treasurer, so he’s putting all that experience into managing our finances. We’ve got a guy who runs his own marine engineering business, and he’s always looking at the boat telling us what needs to be done, and then you’ve got one of our youngest volunteers, James, who’s an IT whiz and will do stuff like updating our website.’’
While most of the team have day jobs, their time spent with Coastguard is 100 per cent voluntary, and funding relies heavily on the support of the community.
"I knew you guys were coming"
Like the rest of his colleagues, Kara has seen good and bad outcomes on the water. Through the countless callouts in his 15 years’ involvement, two particular events stick out in his mind.
The first involved two girls in an inflatable vessel drifting out to sea off Rabbit Island.
As the alarm was raised, the Coastguard crew was already on another job, towing a boat back in that was taking on water with five people, including children, on board.
Springing into action, the crew travelled from Motueka to the bottom end of Rabbit Island within eight minutes.
A man witnessing the girls’ plight unfolding from the shore swam out to the girls on a borrowed surfboard. With the wind pushing the frightened girls further out to sea, the man was only just able to catch up with them as they waited for the Coastguard to arrive.
‘‘They’d got out to them pretty quick, but if [the man] hadn’t have got there, those girls would have probably tried to jump in the water and tried to swim back to shore and would have drowned– it’s as simple as that,’’ Kara says.
The image of a unit member sitting on the deck of the vessel with blankets wrapped around the rescued girls has remained with Kara ever since.
‘‘He’s got kids of his own that are the same age, and he wasn’t letting go of them until they were handed over to the next people – that was pretty heart-rending.’’
Back at base, and with the girls reunited with their families, Kara asked the exhausted surfboard swimmer what made him hang on for so long.
‘‘He just said, ‘I knew you guys were coming’.
‘‘At that point, it made us realise how important we are – the public expect us to be there when they get into strife, and that’s why we all work so hard as volunteers and as a unit.’’
Another memorable rescue was that of two fishermen who had spent 11 hours in the water clinging to their upturned vessel north of Delaware Bay last year.
The men, in their 50s and 60s, had failed to return from a Saturday fishing trip. Thankfully, they had told a friend where they were heading, which provided crucial information for the search and rescue team.
Two vessels from Nelson Coastguard and Surf Rescue Nelson searched for the men using lights and radar, before they were found sitting on top of the partly submerged vessel just before 10pm between Kokorua and Cape Soucis.
‘‘They said they were glad we’d turned up, because the song list was getting a bit rubbish – they were singing to each other to keep their spirits up and were getting desperate,’’ Harrison said at the time.
Kara says that rescue, along with the Rabbit Island incident, was a perfect example of the work put in at training and in exercises with police and search and rescue to rehearse such scenarios.
‘‘Everything was done as textbook – and again, that was a huge credit to our volunteers.’’
‘‘One of the men that was rescued came into the base on Tuesday night and just said, ‘Thanks for getting me home to my family’. You’ve got a whole lot of really stern guys and girls looking around and trying to look everywhere but at him, and it’s those simple reasons why we do it.’’ To help launch Nelson’s new Coastguard vessel, go to www.givealittle.co.nz/cause/ replacement-rescue-vessel-campaign.