The Right Call

Tonight's callout was to a small dinghy with 2 young guys on board that needed retrieving from Vivian Bay. They were cold, wet and didn't have any lights.

They'd left from Buckelton's Beach earlier in the day, motored out to the north end of Kawau, then beached the dinghy near Slip Island to fish off the rocks.

Facing them on return, was a combination of the incoming tide trapping them on the rocks, and, then, after swimming back to the beach, that their boat was swamped. The day wasn't looking very good.

They were also in pretty marginal phone coverage and had difficulty calling for help. Fortunately a young family on a passing catamaran came to their assistance, retrieved their gear, warmed them up and called us to get them home again.

As it was a very small tinny, we loaded the guys and pretty much all their gear onto Kawau Rescue, put them in our nice warm cabin and towed the boat back to Buckletons, where they were pushed ashore to sort out wet gear and head home to Auckland.

Calling for help was definitely the right call, rather than head the 5 or so miles across the bay in a small, open and unlit dinghy, while already cold and wet!

Thanks to our cheerful crew 2 team of Dave, Neale, Dan & Jim for the evening excursion.