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Leigh Volunteer Fire Brigade, assisted by Kawau Volunteer Coastguard, rescued two people from a 16-metre launch that ran onto the rocks in Leigh Harbour during gale-force conditions in the early hours of Sunday January 18.
Firefighters arrived at the scene around 2.30am. The skipper was onboard the vessel which was about 20 metres from the wharf. He was trying to free the anchor, which had become wrapped around a rock.
“The winch also wasn’t working so he couldn’t let out more chain or bring it in,” Leigh Volunteer Fire Brigade chief fire officer Kevin Lawton said. “The boat was then blown onto the rocks opposite the wharf.
“At that stage, coastguard had just arrived. I was there with the police and had St John on standby. We went around to Mount Pleasant Drive, off Cape Rodney Road, so we could go down the old walkway to where the vessel was.”
A rope rescue operation was carried out with support from a specialist lines crew from Auckland.
Fire crews rigged ropes to access the stranded boat and extract the two occupants, a man in his 70s and a woman in her 50s, Lawton said.
“Luckily, the vessel was stern in, so we were able to make access into the boat off the rocks without getting in the water too much. But it was tricky – the tide was full and the boat was jumping all over the place.
“Once we got them off, they were able to slowly walk up the track to Mount Pleasant Drive.”
Two ambulances and an operations manager were at the scene. The couple had no serious injuries, but were taken to hospital as a precaution.
Kawau Volunteer Coastguard skipper Thelma Wilson said crews had launched in heavy rain and gale force easterly winds and took about an hour to reach Leigh Harbour.
“As we were assessing whether we could try to snag the anchor chain and cut it, the launch again was thrown up onto the rocks and spun around,” she said.
“Police and fire were on scene at the wharf, on the other side of the harbour, so getting the two people off via the rocks seemed a safer option – there wasn’t anything we could do for the boat”.
While the firefighters conducted the cliff rescue, coastguard crews held station “ready to hurl life rings if anyone had gone in the water, but the fire team had everything in hand”.
The damaged vessel was relocated and secured to the four-pile mooring next to the Leigh Harbour boat ramp on January 22 with significant damage to its hull visible.
