Coastguard News.

By Stuart Brown.

Welcome to this months Coastguard report.

The winter weather has seen a larger drop-in boating activity than usual and is reflected in the number of trip reports coming into our Radio Operators. Having said that, our Radio Operators are there ready to take your calls during the day. Outside of the unit’s ‘shift’ the VHF calls are diverted to a Radio Hub and mobile calls are diverted to a Whitianga based Duty Officer who is on call 24 hours a day.

The month of May saw the unit undertake five general callouts with the main one being a vessel outside of Cuvier Island with motor issues requiring a tow back to Whitianga. This was a five-hour tasking for the crew who returned to Whitianga around 2230.

The other four callouts were engine or steering related and all required tows back to Whitianga.

By the time you read this, our ten new cadets will have completed both their VHF and Day Skipper courses online and tutor-led theory courses and will then be spending their remaining course time on the rescue vessels putting into practice the learned theory.

Our Facebook page will give you details of the unit’s current activity.

Crew training continued with weekly on-water sessions and we will be having to brush up on our chart plotter knowledge following the upgrade of Te Morehu’s chart plotters with new Raymarine equipment.

Safe Boating

Stuart Brown,

Coastguard Whitianga

Caption: Coastguard training.