The wiles of the waves
It’s against the law to drive without a licence, but no equivalent exists for boating in a country where the water forms part of who we are, writes Christina Persico.
Lee Drummond, president of Coastguard Taranaki, says helping people is ‘‘good for the soul’’, despite not every job having a happy ending. ‘‘Things do happen at sea,’’ he says. ‘‘It’s not like a car where you can just stop on the side of the road and hitchhike home.
‘‘Boaties look after each other but the Coastguard guys get satisfaction from supporting boaties. It’s just about helping people.’’
By the end of this year more than 1.4 million Kiwis will have headed out in a recreational boat, according to Maritime NZ data.
Around a third of them will be in power boats and dinghies, but only about half of those boaties will wear life jackets.
So far in 2017 New Zealand has seen 16 deaths related to recreational boating.
This week two drowning deaths went before the Rotorua Coroner’s Court. Both hearings heard lifejackets could have made the difference.
Taranaki has had four water fatalities in the past three years.
Last month, Teiron Jones died off the coast of Waitara after his boat capsized.
Rescuers said the 60-year-old wasn’t wearing a lifejacket when his body was recovered from the sea. Maritime New Zealand later confirmed a detention notice had been put on a boat owned by Jones because it was unseaworthy.
That order remained in place at the time of his death.
It was the second tragedy involving the music teacher. In August he was convicted of manslaughter following the death of his friend, Erka Xu, who had drowned in July 2015 after a wave struck Jones’ four-metre inflatable vessel.
Neither man had been wearing a lifejacket.
In February 2016 Stuart Symonds died after his four-metre fibreglass dinghy capsized as he attempted to cross the Pa¯tea River bar. He and his companion, who survived, were both wearing lifejackets.
In August 2015, 18-year-old Matt Smith went missing after the boat he was in flipped about 1.1 kilometres out from New Plymouth’s Back Beach. It is understood that he was not wearing a lifejacket. His body has never been found.
Though extremely rare, incidents like these can happen at any time for Drummond and the 39 Taranaki volunteers.
‘‘It’s something that the guys train for,’’ he says.
‘‘It’s physically demanding just to be able to stand up and hold on in those boats and you’re searching for somebody.
"It’s about the recovery and the finality of it. Bringing that person back to the families - sometimes we’re successful at that and other times we’re not.
‘‘It’s not something you see every weekend. The vast majority have a happy ending.’’
And Coastguard Taranaki, based at Port Taranaki, is always prepared for the call, whatever the conditions.
‘‘All the wet crew are on pagers,’’ Drummond says. ‘‘So if it went off now there’d be people driving past.’’
Drummond says more people should stick to the basics when going out on the water – calling in a trip report, wearing a lifejacket and putting contact details on the boat trailer in the carpark where someone will see them.
‘‘It’s just about those simple things. It’s so common sense it’s bloody scary.’’
Time, Drummond says, is crucial. ‘‘The water, although it’s warm here, it’s 20 degrees, it saps your energy. You try being in a 20-degree bath for an hour. The earlier we can respond the better the outcome.’’
But can more be done to make boating safer?
In New Zealand, skippers must ensure they are carrying enough correctly-sized life jackets for everyone on board - but there’s no single law to require those jackets to be worn at all times. Instead it’s up to the skipper. Lifejackets must be worn at times of greater risk, such as crossing a bar or in bad weather, and individual councils have different bylaws on their use. It’s something of a grey area.
Taranaki Regional Council’s Navigation and Safety Bylaw 2009 for Port Taranaki and its approaches requires a skipper to carry one lifejacket of the right size and type per person.
"The council will be monitoring the behaviour of boaties and the bylaw requirements in Port Taranaki and its approaches over summer, particularly the lifejacket requirements," resource management director Fred McLay said in a statement. "The council can issue an instant fine of $150 for a breach of the lifejacket rule." However, the Safer Boating Forum, a marine safety group made up of 23 organisations including Maritime NZ, councils, the Coastguard, Surf Lifesaving NZ, Waka Ama NZ and the police, takes the position ‘that all persons on recreational vessels of six metres or less in length wear lifejackets at all times while the vessel is underway’.
Maritime NZ senior media and communications advisor Vince Cholewa says the Forum is encouraging local authorities to introduce this as a mandatory requirement as local bylaws are reviewed. ‘‘New Zealand has a light-handed regulation regime that puts the responsibility on recreational boaties to be prepared, take precautions, be safe and know the rules,’’ he says.
‘‘Ninety per cent of recreational boating fatalities are men.’’
Boaties over-estimating their own ability and under-estimating the risk of being on the ocean is believed to be a factor in many recreational boating accidents.
‘‘Male bravado and not having had a major accident before contribute to the over-confidence of middle-aged and older men.’’
He says the majority of fatalities occur in the 45-54-year-old age bracket, with those aged 55-64 the next highest. Most fatalities are on boats in coastal waters as opposed to rivers or lakes.
‘‘It takes only one accident on the water for a tragedy to occur.’’
Craig McDonald, Naki Fishing Charters owner and skipper, says boaties need to stick to the basics.
As a charter operator, he has to ‘‘run a tight ship’’ and is strictly regulated, and he’s open-minded on the subject.
In Western Australia it is now a requirement to hold a Recreational Skipper’s Ticket to be in charge of a powerboat. This qualification is based on a set of marine safety competencies that must be demonstrated to an authorised assessor.
‘‘Whether it would be good to somehow go down that track and people have got to do a compulsory boating course before they operate a vessel, I don’t know,’’ McDonald says. ‘‘It might be quite a good thing.’’
Another good thing would be more education. ‘‘Even just down at our local port we seem to have a lot of new boaties from foreign countries buying little boats and heading out.’’
McDonald says a umber of people don’t call Coastguard to report their trips because they are not a member, but the Coastguard will take trip reports from nonmembers.
He also thinks life jackets should be mandatory at all times, certainly on small boats, ‘‘which they sort of are anyway’’.
‘‘Because a boat can go down really quickly, quicker than people. I’ve had people say the boat went down like a stone and they didn’t have time to grab their life jackets.’’
Glenn Watson, a club captain at the New Plymouth Sportfishing and Underwater Club, says it is his personal view that boats should have a warrant of fitness similar to that of a motor vehicle.
‘‘Until it’s the law nothing’s going to happen and it’s a law that someone needs to police, so I’d say it’s a resource issue.’’
However, he believes life jackets should remain the skipper’s responsibility.
‘‘I make my guys wear them...I still think that should be the skipper’s call.’’
He said boating is ‘‘as safe as you want to make it’’.
As for Lee Drummond, the good days outnumber the bad ones.
‘‘Every rescue with a good outcome is a favourite story,’’ he says.
‘‘You just hope you train for nothing.’’