Maritime mishaps a warning
A fisher thought a shark was on the line but soon the hunter was hooked. Tom Hunt looks back at the dangers some faced out on New Zealand’s water.
‘‘The last two paddlers dived into the water just before contact.’’ Maritime NZ report notes from an incident where a powerboat’s captain didn’t hear yells from a waka ama crew and slammed into them.
As Kiwis flock to the sea for summer, Maritime NZ reports highlight the dangers – some curious, some painful – of the sea. These include a single stag party that sent the groom and a guest overboard, a yacht narrowly missed by a ghost powerboat, and an entire truck and trailer lost overboard.
Maritime NZ releases monthly reports detailing – in varying amounts of detail – what it calls accident, incident, and mishap notifications.
In the first 10 months of 2016, 404 of these were filed, equalling more than 40 per month or more than an incident daily.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the summer months of February and March – with 57 and 59 incidents respectively – were our worst maritime months, while springtime September’s 22 incidents made that the safest on the sea.
It was back in January when a passenger on a ferry in Marlborough opened a door but had it blown back on him ‘‘slamming his middle finger between the doors, causing the skin and flesh above the joint to be cut off cleanly’’.
In a separate incident one would like to think a tourism guide would know their patch, but somehow an Auckland skipper slowed the vessel to relay facts and stories about the harbour only to becomes stuck on a sandbank.
While the passengers were transferred to another boat, the stuck boat had to wait for the incoming tide to become free. It was summertime in the Bay of Plenty when sailors noticed a ‘‘large white powerboat’’ coming towards them. As it neared they realised nobody was at the helm and only one person was visible on the flybridge. The crew accelerated hard to get out of the way and the captain-less motorboat passed within a metre or two of them. It was night-time in Northland in February when a fishing crew member realised smoke and flames were coming from the engine room so got in a dinghy and rowed up wind of the boat.
Within five minutes the whole wheelhouse was ablaze and the escaper was picked up and treated in hospital for smoke inhalation.
An Auckland stag party took a soggy turn in February when a ship returning to berth had the groom go overboard.
He was hauled from the drink, but as the ship was berthing another passenger fell through an open sea door and swam to the wharf.
A waka ama crew in a Northland harbour in March had a close call as a powerboat’s captain didn’t hear yells from the waka ama crew and slammed into them.
‘‘The last two paddlers dived into the water just before contact,’’ the Maritime NZ report notes, adding the waka ama suffered a metre-long gash. The motorboat’s captain said he had not seen the waka ama.
In Auckland that same month a yacht towing a fishing line accidentally hooked a kayaker so deep in the finger it couldn’t be freed, leading to the kayaker being towed while the yacht’s crew were blissfully unaware of the drama in their wake.
The kayaker eventually freed the hook using a knife and, bleeding heavily, paddled to shore.
A fishing boat crew at sea in April had a ghostly close call. They picked up a small radar reading but it was ‘‘gaining and losing the target’’ and – with no lights visible – the crew believed it was a ‘‘ghost target’’.
That was until a boat with no navigation lights appeared, missing them by about 200 metres.
The infamous July incident when a truck and trailer unit was lost overboard from the Cook Strait Bluebridge ferry in heavy seas also gets a mention in the Maritime NZ reports.
So does another one around the same time in Cook Strait in which a large passenger ship rolled about 40 degrees injuring four passengers and two crew.
Some may call it divine retribution but a fisher in Bay of Plenty in July was trying to haul a shark on a line when things took a decidedly painful twist.
‘‘The hook pulled free from the shark and came back and hit them in the mouth, smashing three teeth, and cutting their lip and tongue.’’