My Account
Removing “spaghetti” from a propellor is all in a day’s work for Coastguard crew, from left Matt Turner and Raymond Greenfield.
Autumn is officially here, but it’s still beautiful out there on the water, with lots going on to keep us busy.
Totting up the statistics from the summer, we attended 33 callouts in February – an average of more than one every day – compared with 20 in January and 18 in December. Our crew-hours over the three months totalled 728, and we assisted 233 people.
The most common problems, as ever, have been tired batteries and fuel issues – so don’t forget to keep your battery charged (ideally with a trickle charger), and use the ‘rule of thirds’ with the fuel: one-third of a tank to go out, one-third to come back, and a third for contingencies.
There have been a few ‘curlies’, too. In fact, I’m nursing grazed knuckles after going out to a boat with a fouled propeller off Rangitoto. He’d picked up a length of ancient rope off the seabed, encrusted with barnacles and snarled up in a piece of rusty angle-iron. We managed to cut away all the ‘spaghetti’, but I learnt the hard way that the job is best done with thick gloves on.
At the end of February we invited members of the North Shore and Kawau units to attend a barbecue at our Stanmore Bay shed, and to take turns at the helm of our Sealegs. Judging from the grins on a few faces, it all went down well. Around 21 volunteers came from the Shore and there were seven from Kawau who arrived of course by boat, anchoring up in the bay. It was very enjoyable catching up with fellow volunteers over a hotdog, and instructive too: we don’t often get the chance to swap ideas and techniques (and funny stories) and it helps extend the local community far beyond the shores of the Hibiscus Coast.
Our thanks go out to all who made the effort, especially to our Shore Crew for putting on the food.
This is the final Coastguard column for the season. Thanks Matt and Coastguard Hibiscus for your contributions.
