It might not be the most dignified way to board a ship, but a shipwrecked Norwegian yachtsman is doubtless thankful to be hauled aboard the Southern Lily in rough seas 400km northeast of Auckland, as seen from an accompanying P-3 Orion in the New Zealand Defence Force’s second successful SAR operation during the weekend of 18–19 November. Rescuers battled southerly winds of 25kt and swells of up to 3.5m to reach the Ilanga.
November was a busy month for RNZAF SAR services. One of the searches, on 18 November, involved the yacht Waimanu with an activated emergency beacon about 166km east of Norfolk Island, reportedly with one person on board and in unpleasant conditions with a 30kt southerly and a 3m swell.
The Rescue Coordination Centre requested NZDF support to locate the yacht, and the RNZAF sent a C-130 Hercules whose crew spotted the Waimanu’s Kiwi skipper waving from a life raft, a few minutes after reaching the yacht’s reported location. They established communications with him and dropped a survival pack with water, food and a note.
The Hercules stayed in the area until MV Norfolk Guardian arrived and was able to take the sailor on board and then sail to Norfolk Island to disembark him.
The RNZAF was then called on a third time in little more than a week to help in the rescue of a sailor who had sent a distress call, again on 18 November, some 400km northeast of Auckland.
In the weekend’s second SAR operation, a P-3 Orion was deployed to support the rescue of the yacht Ilanga’s Norwegian skipper by commercial vessel MV Southern Lily. The Rescue Coordination Centre had picked up Ilanga’s emergency signal and requested NZDF support the previous day.
The Hercules was re-tasked on its way home from its Norfolk Island operation and found the Ilanga, being able to establish communications with the skipper. However, a rescue operation could not be carried out due to poor conditions in the area and with only a few hours of daylight left. The Hercules reported the 12m yacht’s electrical unit had caught fire and it had started to take on water through a window.
Although the yacht no longer had navigation lights, the skipper had a handheld VHF radio which he had been turning off from time to time to save on power. The Orion crew located the yacht and awaited the arrival of the MV Southern Lily to compete a successful rescue of the skipper late in the afternoon in strong winds and rough seas.
Other recent RNZAF SAR missions went further north to Kiribati, searching for missing fishermen on 18 October and 11 November. Since January the NZDF has operated more than 90hr on eight SAR missions. The 2016 total was 234hr on 19 missions in New Zealand and the Pacific, up 59 percent from the 147hr recorded the previous year.
- Report by John King, photograph by NZDF.