Marine breakdowns keep Coastguard busy

A 36 percent increase in incidents attended within the Waikato, Auckland and Northland areas of New Zealand has kept Coastguard extremely busy over the holiday period. Between Christmas Eve and January 4, Coastguard Northern Region volunteers attended to 201 incidents, compared to 148 incidents for the same period last year.

Over half of the incidents attended by Coastguard were related to either mechanical or electrical problems, in line with previous years statistics. The other main causes of incidents were fuel problems, boats running aground and overdue boats.

Coastguard Northern Region chief executive Dean Lawrence says that there appears to be no single reason to the increase in incidents this summer apart from the fact that generally the weather has been largely favourable for boating in the region, which usually indicates that more people are out on the water.
“What has been pleasing to see is that kayaks, which featured in a number of incidents prior to Christmas, have not been a problem over the holiday period, meaning that they are taking the necessary steps to keep themselves safe on the water,” he says.

Mr Lawrence says that Coastguard can’t stress enough the importance to carry the appropriate safety equipment when going out on a boat, which includes carrying properly fitting lifejackets for each person on board and two forms of reliable communications that will work, even when wet.
“In quite a few of the incidents that Rescue Vessels have attended to over the summer, boats have been using their marine VHF radios which has meant that it has been considerably quicker for Coastguard to be able to respond to their calls for assistance.

Coastguard Northern Region looks after the area from Thames across to Kawhia and everything north. The 26 Coastguard units spread throughout the region are staffed by nearly 1000 volunteers who are available 24 hours a day, everyday of the year to save lives at sea.

Coastguard Northern has its busiest day this summer on December 27 when 1632 trip reports were lodged in a single 24 hour period. At its peak that meant that the Operations Room was answering one call every 23 seconds.