Coastguard volunteers from Coastguard Waimakariri-Ashley and Sumner Lifeboat participated in a specially modified Workplace First Aid course with a practical component in Sumner on Saturday 22nd May.  The refresher course covers all the basics but provides our people with the opportunities to practice their skills either on the water or as with the weekends course using realistic fake injuries.

Coastguard Lake Brunner now has a dedicated rescue vessel thanks to the generosity of Coastguard New Zealand.  Magic of Auckland or MoA has been with Coastguard Canterbury for the past two years and prior to traveling ‘over the hill’ to Lake Brunner has had some refurbishment work carried out on her in April.

Coastguard Southern Region Operations Manager along with two Coastguard Canterbury members spent the weekend of 1st & 2nd of May in Lake Brunner with the unit there providing practical training for their new vessel.    In addition Coastguard Canterbury donated their Nissan 4WD vehicle to Coastguard Lake Brunner to tow MoA.

Coastguard Queenstown volunteers joined in the search for a missing diabetic on land for 3 hours on Sunday night and then launched Queenstown Airport Rescue to continue to search along the shoreline overnight.    A searching helicopter spotted his vehicle which had crashed off the road into the lake the next day.  Coastguard recovered the body to Sunshine Bay.  Our sympathy to his family.

7 May 2010 a group three on a makeshift raft had been seen heading to Pigeon Island and not returning for two days.   Coastguard Queenstown were tasked by Police to search for them and 4 volunteers went out at 7.50am on Queenstown Airport Rescue.  They were located near the island at 10am having made repeated attempts to row back but been blown ashore on the island.  Coastguard Queenstown volunteer crew brought the three back to Queenstown, safe but cold.

A man’s body was found by a helicopter in Foveaux Strait last night after the boat he was in capsized when it was hit by a freak wave.  Two men were fishing off the east coast of Dog Island, 5km from Bluff, when the 4.7m boat they were in capsized about 2.30pm.

The boat was spotted by passing fisherman John Dick about 5.30pm and Coastguard was notified. Mr Dick said he spotted something in the distance and realised it was a man sitting on top of the boat. “He was sitting up there and was in good spirits – I was absolutely surprised how good a condition he was in for the time he was on the boat. Lucky boy.  ”He was pretty shaken and cold and was pretty worried about what I think was his father-in-law,” he said.

The man on the upturned boat, who was wearing a lifejacket, told Mr Dick the boat had been hit by a freak wave about 2.30pm and he and the 50-year-old man he was fishing with had climbed on top of the boat. But the 50-year-old man got cold quickly, slipped off the boat and decided to try to swim to Dog Island.

Coastguard volunteer crews from Riverton and Bluff searched along with a local helicopter. The boat was found about 1.5km to the northeast of Dog Island and the man’s body was spotted by one of the helicopters about 500m off the island about 8.50pm.  Coastguard Riverton recovered the man’s body and took him to Bluff.

The man found on the boat was last night recovering in Southland Hospital

3rd May 2010: Coastguard Kaikoura were asked by St John to assist with the medical evacuation of a crew member on the NIWA research vessel Tangaroa.  The crew member badly injured a finger at approximately 6.30am some 200 nautical miles from shore.  The Tangaroa headed for Kaikoura and the Coastguard vessel Kaikoura Rescue met them at 11am and transferred the injured man to shore and a waiting ambulance.