K4309

So are your batteries charged now? I've used a $30 volt meter for the last 20 yrs, and just graduate to a Junktek battery monitor for the house batts, cost about $80.

From a story about NZL14 in Queenstown. If Mike Parker has all the gear to refit NZL 14, I'm a bit surprised he tried using a 15mm mooring line on NZL 20. May as well have used fishing braid. Entirely inappropriate mooring line, and this who palava could have been easily avoided with bit of 30mm line and proper chafe gaurding. The bit on the bowsprit the line goes over appears to have good anti-skid on it, i.e. the best sandpaper you can get. Auckland yachtie Mike Parker, who tells Scene he recently purchased another America’s Cup boat, NZL20, also known as Black Magic, says t

Third hand report via facebook it was refloated last night.

The owner is a surfer, not a sailor (his words). You can tell by the light line he used to moor this piece of sh*t. Anyway, the story is he wants to use it for surfing safari's, to drop surfers off just outside the break. He said yesterday that, if it had not broken it's piece of ridiculously light mooring line (my words) he was going to take it back around to Gulf Harbour today to install a new engine. There is a whole bunch of questions around this. I've no idea what it's stability would be like sans keel and mast. Esp in any sort of sea way. It wasn't antifouled, and never had been. Ev

Is it a Club, or some sort of high return hospitality investment?

I'm staying out of this for now. As of 5:30pm the owner was down there with two others, using a jetski and a small plastic dinghy with a 2hp. So I doubt I could add very much with my inflatable and 2 hp. Last I spoke to him he had trash pumps and a generator too. There is zero wave action and only a moderate wind. I'd say the boat drifted ashore rather than being driven ashore by waves, so I'd like to think it wont be too complicated to get off. Not sure if the jetski will cut it, but full credit for trying. The back story is growing increasingly interesting. Third hand account that the o

It is normal in that they have to give the owner an opportunity to sort it out themselves. All the HM does is contract the salvage company, then send the owner the bill. It starts at $10k for the simplest job, and would typically be maybe $30k, not counting disposal...

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OK, no jokes now. I've been down there and spoken to the owner, who is f**king hopeless. He is a surfer, not a sailor (his words), and hasn't got a clue. Who is local and wants to help get this off the rocks before it smashes up and we have 10 million carbon fibre splinters washing around our marine environment? High tide is 7pm tonight. I can get two good anchors, chain and a hundred or so meters of rod, my 3m inflatable and a 2hp outboard. I'm also perfectly happy to swim around in the dark, have dive torches and appropriate wetsuit. Anyone got a RIB or dinghy with bigger

That really f**ks me off. Its only been there 5 minutes. I was out fishing off Army Bay when they towed it around, maybe only 1 month ago? Sure it was there on Saturday. And its not like we had a descent NE storm or any swell. What did they moor it with? Fishing braid? That is just incompetent to moor a boat and have it bust off within 5 minutes, and without a descent storm. Edit: 14th June it was towed around there. Its the 17th July today. 32 days it lasted on the mooring. And we haven't had a NE blow yet. Who can spell 'insurance job?'

Yes. You will need a dredge about the size of the Mangere treatment plant to make it work without spreading more of it around in the discharge water. That said, if this thing does go feral, its main problem is smothering everything. A suction dredge would be ideal to remove it from the sea-floor, allowing all the snails, crabs and worms etc to get going, and the associated fish to feed off them etc. If there is already wide-spread infestation of the caulerpa, manually removing it by suction dredge would mitigate the smoothering impact of it, keeping our marine biodiversity going. All

I love how they've known about it for 2 years, AND are taking immediate action.... Bringing some guys over from LA next month to give them tips on suction dredging. Shame they didn't get organised waaayyyy back when it was first found at Barrier. If I thought banning anchoring and fishing made any difference, I would support the bans. I don't have a remote anchor winch, so naturally give my anchor and chain a full visual check every time I bring it up. And it is beyond me how fishing can be a problem. Other than all the techniques that don't touch the bottom (trolling, topwater spinn

Just curious BP, when was the last time you took the GH ferry? I haven't taken it in living memory, but I've just worked out that if I get one of those HOP cards, I can take the kids for free, and we get free entry into the Maritime Museum, so an ideal school holiday excursion all funded by the rate payer. Now all I have to do is find the one retailer that does HOP cards up here.

What is the dodgy attachment for, and are you trying to infect my device?

I am fairly concerned for the people that bought a house they could afford in Hamilton that already worked in Auckland, or live in Hamilton and took a job in Auckland on the basis that there was a scheduled commuter service. That said, if there are fast commuter trains from Papakura, why does Te Huia need to go into the city? I understand there is already track capacity issues? My suspicion (you can call it a conspiracy theory if you like) is that coordinating the various train schedules into Auckland is too complicated, and this is a good excuse to stop Te Huia at Papakura, transfer

Spain? You mean Jeddah, for the Jamal Kashoggi memorial regatta. There is more money in greenwashing tyrannical dictatorships and legitimitising their war on the piss-poor goat-herder neighbours than there is racing boats y'know. But I wouldn't think anything Dalton does would influence land development. That area has been prime for development for some time. I am very surprised nothing has been announced for the land at Sailor's Corner. Was sad when Smart Marine closed and moved, but just can't get the revenue from medium format retail in an old shed that you can from multi-level develop

PS, I'd be most appreciative if one of you inteligent gentlemen could explain to me how it is that Kiwirail can't do it's job and needs regulator intervention.

Yup. I understand exactly what you are saying. The onus falls on the businesses. In the case of WI, the tour operators. So why bother with a regulator? Are we supposed to have oversight of high risk industries? Mining? Adventure Tourism? While the WI trial is all over the media, the businesses are getting all the bad rap. The whole reason I'm going on about this so much, is that Worksafe as the regulator were negligent and should be charged and in the same prosecution. It has been stated by various specialists in the field that if Worksafe weren't the regulator and the prosector, i.e

Whilst this may appear to be a major thread drift, this is a very good example of taking action / sanctioning an operator BEFORE a major fatal incident. We can only lament if Worksafe took action against all of the White Island tour operators it knew weren't registered or complying with the Adventure Tourism requirements. The Te Huia Train has ran a red light twice in a month, so NZTA / Waka Koathanger has now banned it from Auckland. Perhaps if more government agencies did their job, and / or didn't wait for disasters, we wouldn't need so many rules and regulations, given the ones w

Yes, indeed. That is why I copied the whole lot from the RNZ story. It will be very interesting to see what comes of this. In isolation the charge on the medical certificate looks pedantic. But it may also be a symptom of someone that is not across their responsibilities and requirements. (this of course just conjecture). Is there an equivalent commercial shipwreck where the Master survived and was prosecuted? I can't immediately think of an example. The Mikhail Lermentov was a fair while ago, but I don't believe the Pilot got prosecuted. He continued to work on the MV Straitsman (I

Goodhew is charged with breaching his duties as a worker on the vessel and in doing so allegedly exposed individuals to a risk of death or serious injury. The charge carries a maximum penalty of a $150,000 fine. His business, which trades as Enchanter Charters Ltd, is charged with operating a ship without the prescribed qualified personnel. It alleged Goodhew did not have a medical certificate at the time of the incident. The business is also charged with allegedly failing to address voyage and passage planning in its Maritime Transport Operation Plan, and allegedly failing to identi

We are all obviously very interested in how the prosecution will play out. I think that is what aardvark calls due process, but the substance of the charge against the company, "operating a ship without the prescribed qualified personnel" is in relation to an expired first aid certificate. Now, I might be wrong, the particular qualification may have a slightly more convoluted name, but for all intense purposes, it is a first aid certificate. This is the reality of where our regulators and watchdogs have gotten to. Worksafe were fully aware all but one of the tour operators were not r

Or worse, the old guy who's ferry got nailed will get prosecuted for having an expired first aid certificate. It is all they have on the Enchanter Skipper, with 5 dead.

This is a very good appraisal of the issue Psyche. Of primary relevance to the original topic, we have this serious crash of a passenger ferry. We now have three govt agencies investigating it. They have said it will take them a couple of years to work out what happened. We can all see what happened. It is beyound me why we can't have just one govt agency investigate this, and determine what happened within a week. If there are some minor details to work out, that can be done in a court of law, assuming what we all believe, that the guy in the fizz boat was negligent. More widely, we