Kevin McCready

Matt, NZ Territoy covers South Pole to up near Tonga. It's horses for courses. RCC decides, depending on location of epirb, who to contact. They work as a team so while one phones the EPIRB owner's registered contacts, another team member will be liasing with police on a no surprises basis and with Maritime Radio and or coastguard. But RCC will coordinate the response. In the Hauraki Gulf for example RCC would also contact Maritime Radio and helicopter team (they might take a while to become airborne but they have 406 trackers on board). So I'm inclined to trust, especially given the Chann

Maritime NZ website awaiting update currently says: "RCCNZ usually receives alerts from distress beacons within minutes. However, depending on the type of beacon you're carrying, it can take two hours or longer for satellites to pinpoint your location." http://www.maritimenz.govt.nz/Recreational-Boating/Communications-equipment/EPIRBs.asp#Why_is_the_response_not_always_immediate This advice is very general worst case scenario and applies to land and sea. The situation on sea is better because signals are picked up easier (no terrain and vegetation problems). Maritime NZ are wo

I use dual or tri-watch depending on VHF in use and it's always on unless I need sleep. I have a small EPIRB folded into my life-jacket. I trust that if I go overboard my GPS position would be known within minutes?? I also use paper charts for everywhere I go. It's a skill we should all have and maintain.

Thanks Matt How would this be better than the app on Android

I don't have enough info to make a call on whether the boat was ok or what condition the crew may have been in or how good tie downs were inside for floorboards, equipment and crew and therefore risk of injury. Or whether they were pumping water etc etc. I did think it was getting along at quite a clip even with the drougue, but as long as the drouge prevented broach and roll, good! Problem could be cross seas later causing broach and roll from a different direction and I don't know what was forecast.

Hi matt do you have a link to what you have. By the way the crew website for mobile does not have a button to follow a thread

Let's hope so. When I saw the first few episodes of Whale Wars (the HBO? doco on them) I was actually VERY surprised they hadn't killed any of their own crew!!! Check out the launching under way of their rib. Don't get me wrong, they are doing a great job. But Whale Wars showed Watson as a liar and manipulator. First mate Peter Brown wouldn't know one end of a rope from another. Second mate Peter Hammarstedt was a creepy acolyte of Watson who knew how to play to Watson's god complex. The management style was like nothing I'd ever seen. A suggestion, not an order, was made by Watson fr

Having read the last Professional Skipper on the navy/wet bus ticket accusation, I'm siding with the Navy. Rule of Law and Law of the Sea is fundamental to a small nation like NZ. Hey Matt, is there an option to automatically subscribe to a post I've posted on. It wastes time having to click on 'more reply options'.

Putting my economist hat on, gotta say that the trickle down trick of "so and so many thousand jobs created" is as old as the hills and usually relies on some very dodgy stats. So I'm very wary of the claim by Rehabilited (whoever he or she is) that POA "adds more than 187,000 jobs to the Auckland economy." I also find it the mark of a crude analysis, not to put too fine a point on it, that Rehab dismisses any alternative to his/her views as communist (grey boiler suits from memory). I think Rehab loses on a reverse technicality of Godwin's Law. But let's not forget the most telling argume

Thanks for the Manapouri flashback! Here's the old John Hanlon song, Damn the Dam. ('cept is was power for Comalco, not the people, but why quibble with the lyrics at so late a date).

Not Penny Whiting, Penny Hulse, deputy mayor. She was chairing the meeting in the video

I'll be there at the demo on Sunday! These arseholes did this in secret and made the decision BEFORE the final report on the port's future is released and discussed. Same bunch of arseholes run a system to let an "independent" Duty Commissioner decide in secret that 300 year old kauri tree and ancient rimu (including on the public road reserve) could be cut down after describing it as "vegetation". I was at sea for 8 days and missed that bit of fun but caught up with the brilliant reporting of Kane Glass - (watch the tame bureaucrat forced to admit that a "threshold" is his personal "j

Thanks Matt. Leaving aside the budget for a moment, what boats would be on a good short list of modern designs that ?would give equivalent safety and perhaps forgiveness for short-handed crew.

To take a slightly different tack and pick up on Matt's point about the increased options in vessels these days, are there any boats of more modern design and open transom that would do the trick?

I have to agree with erice. Offshore is a quantum leap in terms of experience required, possible risk, Cat 1 standards for the boat (good liferaft alone adds big bucks, not to mention reliable self steering of more than one kind) and backups of backups for most of your systems. I also dreamt of long offshore voyages perhaps single-handed or with small crew. Having done a 32 day trip from Tahiti to Chile, I now would not do an extended voyage with fewer than four crew (for safe and not too tiring watch rotations). This probably means a bigger boat. Have fun.