A dangerous night flight in a storm to save five people
Lance Donnelly, a pilot of 30 years, described the rescue mission for the fishing charter vessel Enchanter as “the most extreme, most challenging rescue I’ve ever done”.
Ten people were onboard when the Enchanter sank in rough seas around 11pm near North Cape on Sunday.
Five people were saved by the Northland Rescue Helicopter teams and five people were found dead.
At 8.45pm the Northland Rescue Helicopter team received a call from the rescue coordinator centre in Wellington, Donnelly said.
The team of four took off from Whangarei at 10pm after further information that it was a boat charter and a beacon going off.
“At that point we didn’t know whether the boat was in distress or if there were any people in distress,” said Donnelly.
They landed in Kaitāia at 10.50pm to refuel, after discovering their trip had become a rescue mission.
“We found out on the route to Kaitāia that there were 10 people supposedly in the water.”
The team investigated sending other assets and boats to the scene, but a helicopter rescue proved to be the only option.
“We have very strict limitation on what weather we can fly in. As we approached Kaitāia we determined the weather was okay to proceed further.” The helicopter departed Kaitāia to North Cape at 11.15pm, and the team began the search for the beacons.
“We located two lights in the water. On further investigation we saw three persons on some structure of the boat.” Four crew on the helicopter then began battling bad weather and the darkness.
“It was very challenging: nighttime, over the water, big swells and serious wind. We had four crew to affect that rescue, I couldn’t have done it without them,” Donnelly said. “The copilot, his job is just invaluable, he was calling all the capacities that are required, pulling heights and pulling the wind direction, he can see the weather coming in.”
Another crew member operated the hoist and winch, lowering the rescue swimmer by a wire into the heaving water with lifesaving equipment.
“The structure the survivors were on was rocking quite a lot, so we couldn’t risk putting the rescue swimmer on to that structure.
“The most dangerous situation to be in is in the hover, over the water, at night, over a small obstacle.”
The rescue swimmer was dropped five metres from the vessel to prevent the survivors from falling further overboard.
“[The rescue swimmer] had to get the survivors into the water for us to get them back, we couldn’t winch them directly off the hull because the pilot couldn’t see it.”
The crew rescued three survivors and took them to Te Hāpua, before returning to the scene.
“We went back out to the search area where we located another two persons on the upside-down hull.”
At 1.30am, the crew finally landed at Kaitaia Hospital, and Auckland rescue teams took over the search.
“Our concern at the time was, there’s still five more people out there and we felt a little bit helpless to be honest,” Donnelly said.
Donnelly described the team’s communication as a “huge” part of the successes of the difficult rescue.
“You can’t train for jobs like this. You’ve got to think on your feet.”