Coastguard’s voyage to equality
Until the new Coastguard vessel, the Hohapata Sealord Rescue, was launched 18 months ago, Coastguard volunteer Rosie Musters said Nelson’s rescue boat had no working toilet.
Given voyages of up to 16 hours, the lack of a toilet meant women couldn’t be part of Coastguard’s ‘‘wet crew’’.
This was one of the many barriers women faced when working in search and rescue, Musters said.
After 21 years with Coastguard, the volunteer was recently awarded one of the International Rescue Federation’s top prizes for her work as a role model for women in Maritime Search and Rescue (SAR).
Musters said she was humbled by the recognition, as well as gobsmacked to be chosen out of an international selection of nominees.
She didn’t even know she had been nominated until Coastguard president Peter Kara told her she was a finalist.
Musters worked in a number of roles in the Nelson watch. She was currently training five women, including one who had just left school and one in her 50s, to join the team’s ‘‘wet crew’’, and two to work on shore.
Musters said 50% of new recruits had been women over the past two years. There was also a Saturday crew that was predominantly women.
Musters moved to New Zealand from England when she was 29 to work at Otago University for three years.
She eventually moved up to Nelson, working for the Department of Education and the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology, while practising privately part-time as a psychologist.
The incident that got Musters involved with Coastguard was the capsizing of a yacht between Boulder Bank and Haulashore Island in the mid1990s.
Two people died in the tragedy. It was while providing critical instant care to a woman involved in radio communications during the capsizing that Musters decided to get involved with Coastguard.
‘‘It left quite an impression on me, that bad things happen at sea.’’
Initially, Musters started volunteering around six hours a week with the air patrol unit. Very few women were involved back then.
The people involved tended to be ‘‘old school’’ men from the fishing industry, such as retired skippers.
‘‘It wasn’t that accommodating to women.’’
The culture changed very quickly with the new millennium, Musters said, growing into a more professional outlook with formal training offered to staff.
Now, 20 years later, Coastguard felt more like a ‘‘level playing field’’, with many women managers and staff employed by the organisation.
After retiring six years ago, Musters volunteered full-time with the organisation as a way to keep her brain active, she joked.
She was on shift as duty officer when the 14-hour rescue of the Ocean Gem took place, which earned Nelson Coastguard another award from the International Rescue Federation.
To young women who wanted to get involved in Coastguard, Musters said the organisation had equal opportunities, and the Nelson unit was particularly open to anyone joining, regardless of age or gender.
All you needed was time, energy, or skills, and commitment to be part of the team.