Narrow escape?

Skipper Paul reporting
Thursday 24 Spetember 2026
We've been called out two days in a row. This afternoon’s callout was for a 5.5m Haynes Hunter. It was located on the narrow inlet towards the campground in Whangateau harbour, close to the campground.
The callout was at around 5pm, at around high water. Al had prepped the Airberth for us so we were off on the boat quickly. Great job !
Since the customer's boat was located in the very narrow, shallow, channel close to the camp ground we were grateful it was high water and that we got there within an hour of high tide.
Luckily, it was still dusk when we arrived, and we could see our target at once, in the harbour. We went around into the channel and passed over our battery pack, then started his engine.
Our customer then tried to pull up his anchor, but the engine tripped out again and again we then restarted it.
Because the engine had already stopped once, rather than let him motor back, we left his engine running and towed him back into the main channel.
Once there we practiced catch and release and let him go to continue his journey to the boat ramp. His engine had warmed up, hadn’t stopped again, and he was in a wider stretch of water where there was more time to grab him if the engine failed.

Off he went and having watched for a few moments we too went - off home.