36 rescued on the Harbor.

[wheels 543]

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/9754901 ... nd-Harbour

Anyone see the Drama??

[Grinna 2]

I know a little about the incident. The power cat had sustained some damage to the underneath of the port side of the bridgedeck and in yesterday's seas was taking in water. The skipper and crew apparently didn't notice until the port bow section was well filled and by then the water was coming in quite rapidly. They had all the passengers stacked in the starboard aft quarter while 2 coast guard boats, the Harbourmaster and Deodar3 attended and pumped water out of the port hull. Once the majority of the water was pumped out (& the passengers offloaded) the vessel made it's way to Gulf Harbour under it's own steam.

 

The damage looks to be the result of a collision though the skipper says he never hit anything (wave damage?) and nobody noticed the water ingress until it was well advanced. There were different variations in the story being told apparently so either some confusion or some obfuscation going on. Given that incident was a full on mayday involving a commercially operated vessel and consumed the resources of 3 coastguard vessels, the Harbourmaster & the police I'm sure there will be plenty of questions asked at some point and Maritime NZ will have to investigate.

 

There were at least 11 other incidents in the Auckland area yesterday attended by coastguard .... Including the sinking of a trailer sailer in the Whau channel.