FIRE!

[wheels 543]

No not me, I was well away from the incident. Well, far enough that it shouldn't have been anything to do with me anyway. We just had a drama in the bay. I was on deck doing a quick job in the rain and looked up to see smoke billow up out of the back of a midsize modern Launch. Holy crap, is that someone a little over generous with the BBQ or is the boat on fire. I yelled to Dawn and I came back inside just as a mayday went out. By the time I had my act together with three extinguishers and suddenly thinking bugger that's right, I have to row, others closer seemed to be assisting. In an emergency, there is one thing I have learned over my years, that you can easily have too many people turn up to such an event and instead of being helpful, it all just gets crazy out of hand. Don't get me wrong here, I am not complaining that people were helping, we often don't see enough of that these days. But at the same time, it can so easily get completely confused.
And in this instance, this happened with the Mayday. Now I am not calling anything of this. The Mayday went out and that was the important point. But if we go into a bit more detail with this, hopefully it can just get added to your own knowledge base of things to think about in a distress situation.
The boat putting out the mayday had little detail. They didn't even know the name of the bay, so was saying, Twin Islands, across from Smokehouse. But there was no other information apart from the person trying to tell Maritime that a vessel was on fire and people were on board. So the story grew like Chinese whispers each time a transmission was made. Maritime then put out an "all ships" saying a Boat was on fire near Twin Islands Great barrier, can anyone in the area assist. Well the bay is packed from one end to the other with boats of every size. We hardly needed anymore. Three Dinghies were now at the smoking Boat with extinguishers and the first Boat making the Mayday had no clue what was going on, and relaying messages like, 2 people are now off, then a little later, 4 people are now off and all the time Maritime are calling all ships, boat on fire please assist. We even had another boat in the bay call Maritime up and Maritime said do you know what happening. That reply was, no I can't see the vessel. Well that was not a lot of help. A Young guy made a break call and said, we have dinghies if anyone needs to evacuate. At last another Boat did arrive and he had radio experience and managed to relay enough info to start making sense of the situation.
Sometimes in the panic of people wanting to help, things can get very confusing fast. In other situations, bad things have happened as a result. This wasn't one of them thankfully. But probably the most important lesson to learn in any such situation is for one person/boat to take charge of communication and that person needs to be someone with information and not be panicking. Calm is essential. Panic is the enemy.
If anyone wants to add experience here, go ahead.

I have experienced such a situation myself and I can honestly say, Fire has to be the most scariest thing anyone can have to deal with on board a boat. Although I have never been in a case of the boat going down, but I still think fire is the scary one.

So right now, the fire is out. It was in the engine room. The Boat was modern enough and big enough to have inbuilt fire extinguishing systems in the engine room. They are just waiting for the temperature to drop enough before opening up the room. It looks like it was an electrical fault. They have fuel and electrical (why they could not make their own call) shut off.

[Kevin McCready 83]

Would be interesting later on to see Maritime Rescue critique their own performance here. Seems they need to be a big part of calming the situation down and getting accurate info out. Did Barrier Radio play a role? They are usually good.

[wheels 543]

Not sure who was actually talking to whom. It is also interesting, I had a rather large arguments with friends a few years back, that actually resulted in us falling out. Silly really, but they got noses out of joint. I was trying to tell them that in not all occasions can you deal with an emergency on Ch16 around NZ, because many places simply cannot get a reliable cover on 16. And that was exactly what happened here. Every second or third transmission was lost. We could hear most because arial is at top of mast. But the boat that started the Mayday was a Launch and didn't have the height and so the messages were not always getting through. Plus the messages from this end were not of the best information. I was reluctant to get involved in relay because I was not positive I would be any better and the last thing you want is to simply add to the number of people wanting to be helpful, but only confusing matters further.
I have to say, that for the number of boats over here, a better Ch16 relay would be well worth the cost. I have been very surprised at the lack of radio clarity over here even on Ch82 for outer gulf. We really struggled communicating with CG the other day on that Freq.
I also have to say and feel bad saying it, because I know they do their best as Volunteers, but CG radio leaves me a little concerned in the way they deal with any emergency. I have listened to a few the last few days and I was thinking yikes. Even with CG having all our info re our missing RIB, once by Radio, once by Phone, we have now heard two occasions on the radio about people finding inflatables with motors and oars and CG has not contacted us or made any mention to caller that one was missing and more details please caller.