Riders of the Storm
New Zealand’s boaties, aviators and trampers are being urged to upgrade their emergency distress beacons to 406MHz beacons. The satellite system supporting 121.5 MHz/243MHz distress beacons will cease operation on 1 February 2009. The value of the emergency beacon system was proved dramatically during the 1994 Queen’s Birthday Weekend yacht rescues. Kate Coughlan, then a feature writer for the Evening Post, recalls the biggest search and rescue operation ever mounted in the Pacific.…
A vicious Pacific storm during Queen’s Birthday Weekend 1994 destroyed seven yachts from a fleet cruising to Tonga. Paula and Dana Dinius activated their Emergency Locator Beacon (ELB) after their US-registered Norseman 447 suffered that worst of yachting nightmares – a pitchpole.
A giant wave gathered DESTINY onto its crest and then hurled the yacht into the abyss before it, end-over-end. As the yacht came out of the maelstrom it was rolled again, this time through 360 degrees. Inside, Paula and Dana were flung about, and the largest bone in Dana’s body, his femur, snapped just below the hip ball joint. The mast was smashed and dragged over the side where wave upon wave rammed it against the hull.
Finding the DESTINY had been a straight-forward exercise after the first Orion, captained by FLT LT Bruce Craies, scrambled from Whenuapai airbase. The yacht’s position, relayed from the ELB via satellite to the Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Lower Hutt, was then passed to the Orion crew. This enabled Craies to fly to within 10km of the DESTINY. At this stage, his crew switched their focus to the on-board direction finding equipment, and to the radio transmissions of the ELB.
Over the radio link, Paula impressed all eleven crew aboard the Orion with her calm so far. For hours she had been brave and practical in circumstances among the most terrifying that can be experienced - trapped in a 45-foot (13m) yacht, her husband badly hurt and in great pain, the broken mast is smashing ominously against the hull, malevolent seas tossing the helpless vessel about while the wind shrieked in the spray-filled blackness outside.
WG CDR Craig Inch and his crew relieved the first Orion shortly after midnight. Craig Inch was already a veteran of 11 years of search and rescue operations but he had never seen conditions like it. “Flying the aircraft was a test of strength as it bucked about in the violent turbulence. The turbulence threw the aircraft about and with waves reaching such heights it was too hazardous to operate at the usual search altitude of 60-90 metres. Visibility was poor, with the surface of the sea a white seething mass of blown spray.”
But high above DESTINY, Inch and his crew could hear the anxiety in Paula Dinius’s voice as they communicated by VHF radio. His task was to reassure her, to help her prepare for the rescue, and to guide the Pacific trading vessel TUI CAKAU to the damaged yacht.
“Paula had had no sleep for days, the broken mast was smashing against the hull and her husband was badly injured. She was doing tremendously well but we had to tell her that the rescue ship wouldn’t be there for another few hours,” said Inch. “All people want to do is get off the boat, and it is very hard to have to tell them that help is another two or three hours away. But it wouldn’t have been possible for the TUI CAKAU to have tried a rescue at night – they’d never have seen DESTINY; they couldn’t even see it on their radar.”
Paula and Dana Dinius were rescued at dawn by the TUI CAKAU. A lifeboat was lowered in a cargo net and Fijian crew clambered on board the yacht to drag Dana into it. He later recuperated in Auckland where four steel pins had to be inserted in his broken femur.
By this time another ELB had been activated, and another yacht, the MARY T, located 400km southeast of DESTINY. The Navy’s hydrographic ship HMNZS MONOWAI was asked to go to its aid.
CDR Larry Robbins was the CO: “We made best speed towards her but with wind and sea on the beam MONOWAI rolled heavily, the deck edges often under water. At 0330 on Sunday morning most of the ship’s company were up and about dealing with waves that were forcing past the screen doors, equipment torn off bulkheads, and loose drawers and furniture which had sprung their stays. The sea boat had been hit by a mass of water and damaged. I reluctantly ordered an alteration of course and reduced speed. The wind was 50 knots, with stronger gusts, the sea state 7 (9-metre waves) and we could only make 4-5 knots.
“Just after 0400 the officer of the watch reported a white flare. Nothing more could be seen, and the radar was cluttered by the sea conditions, but a call on VHF Channel 16 made contact with the Australian yacht RAMTHA - the crew wanted to be taken off.
“Dawn revealed an horrendous picture of rain squalls, seas of 10 metres, winds now gusting up to 70 knots and the ship rolling through 35 degrees. No boat could be lowered in these conditions. It took four hours to get close to the crippled catamaran; MONOWAI was difficult to turn and was even pooped when stern to the sea.
It took five attempts with the gun line before RAMTHA’s crew managed to haul the harness aboard. As they put it on, a large roll by MONOWAI jerked them off their feet and into the water. After three minutes (mostly under the water) they were hauled in and recovered on to the foc’sle. Three of my crew had minor injuries from falls, some sonar tow gear was lost overboard, and one wave had plucked all the petrol cans from their stowage and deposited them neatly further up the deck”
“As the number of distressed yachts grew, the Rescue Centre changed our target to an unidentified dis-masted yacht. During Monday, we finally spotted a yacht at a range of 1200 metres. This proved to be the PILOT, an American-registered yacht. Conditions had improved and I sent the RHIB to pick up her crew. Despite a couple of knocks due to the ship’s roll, the RHIB and the yacht’s skipper were safely recovered.”
In some ways, this was a unique search and rescue exercise – all ELBs were located, and one yacht without one was spotted by an eagle-eyed Orion crewman. Communications with the Rescue Centre also proceeded in textbook manner, as did the overseeing of all rescues. It was the “mothering” role played by the aircraft crews which provided the biggest challenges and greatest rewards of the record-length operation.
During those long days and nights, Orion and Hercules crews established an intensity of relationship with the yachtsmen rare in search and rescue operations. The formal rules of communication at sea were put to one side as aircraft crews worked to reassure the victims, talking through details of the rescue operation, explaining the overall picture. Many of the yacht crews had no idea that other boats were also in great danger. For them all, the sound of an Orion or Hercules arriving overhead was the pivotal point in the fight for survival. In constant fear for their lives, a circling aircraft represented the only chance of being rescued.
Among them was the crew of the 42-foot (12m) Wellington yacht SILVER SHADOW, which was in the path of the worst of the storm as it cut through the fleet. She had been rolled through 360 degrees, lost a mast, and her skipper Peter O’Neil was seriously injured. But the crew were in control, despite having no life raft and in danger of being rolled again.
Rescue Centre coordinator Bill Sommer asked the Hercules crew to rate the plight of SILVER SHADOW on scale of one to five (with five being in dire need of rescue). The Hercules rated the yacht a “two” only, giving Sommer the chance to direct the aircraft to search for another ELB.
CDR Larry Robbins recalls that, hours later, “an Orion then directed us to SILVER SHADOW, which again only became visible at under 1200 metres. Although the yacht was dismasted, she could still manoeuvre and the crew had rigged emergency steering. The skipper, Peter O’Neill (who was himself injured), elected to abandon his yacht before sunset. After getting the injured man safely aboard, a large sea swamped the RHIB, the engine began belching black smoke, and the running block of the boat crane fouled. When we did manage to recover the sea boat, its hull sponsons had been damaged from repeated slamming against the ship.”
Meanwhile the catamaran HEARTLIGHT was in more serious trouble – leaking and disabled by a drogue around her propeller, but the weather in the area was so atrocious that the Orion had to “give it away,” fly into an area with less wind shear and turbulence, and approach from a different direction. “When you looked down on it at first, the sea was all white and it didn’t look particularly rough. It wasn’t until you got down to 300-400 feet (90-120m) that you could see the huge walls of water. They were like rolling hills, and were causing severe turbulence,” said Craig Inch. After hours of mothering by the RNZAF aircrew, the crew of HEARTLIGHT were picked up by one of the ships.
The QUARTERMASTER, with Aucklanders Bob and Marie Rimmer and Marie’s adult son John Anderson on board, was the yacht the RNZAF never found. She was last heard from by Kerikeri Radio when the crew reported that they “weren’t in great shape” and were about to try and turn through mountainous seas. Though the search lasted until dusk that Tuesday, all that was found of the Quartermaster was a life raft containing an activated ELB.
Larry Robbins: “On Tuesday we were tasked to search for the QUARTERMASTER, and we could now operate the Wasp helicopter, which joined in the aerial search. When wreckage was sighted during Wednesday it proved to be from the HEARTLIGHT. The search for the QUARTERMASTER was finally called off, which considerably dampened our euphoria over the successful rescues. Late on Wednesday evening we finally encountered the MARY T. Although tired, the crew were in fine shape, and the yacht was making ground towards Fiji.”
In total, three lives were lost (from QUARTERMASTER) but 21 others were plucked to safety from 6 other yachts. The RNZAF flew 117 hours by Orions of No 5 Sqn and a sortie by a Hercules of No. 40 Sqn. The ‘groundies’ at Whenuapai worked through the long weekend and subsequent days to keep the aircraft flying. And at sea, MONOWAI, two cargo ships, a fishing boat and a French naval vessel performed the rescues. It was the largest Pacific SAR anyone could recall.
New Beacons
From 1 February 2009, 406MHz beacons will be the only beacons monitored by satellite. The new beacons provide a faster and more accurate location to rescuers, by linking to geostationary satellites. The 406s are picked up across the entire globe and can narrow down the search area to approximately 20 square km, and even down to a few square metres if the beacon is GPS enabled. Each beacon has a unique identification code, which is part of the transmitted signal. If the beacon is registered with Rescue Coordination Centre New Zealand, the code provides vital details to rescuers including the owner’s emergency contact details. www.beacons.org.nz/.
To Read More…
Riders of the Storm was first published in NZ Defence Quarterly, No 6, Spring 1994.This version has been edited and adapted to include MONOWAI’s story.
Read about all the rescues in: Rescue in the Pacific, by Tony Farrington. McGraw Hill 1996. Also published in the UK as Rogue Storm.
CDR Robbins’ story is also published in: Salt beneath the skin; seafaring Kiwis tell their stories. Tessa Duder (Ed). Harper Collins, Auckland 2000.
Video documentary: Pacific Rescue. Ninox films with National Geographic Society, TV3 and NZ on Air, 1995; or: Ninox Collectors Edition 2005. This documentary includes spectacular video footage shot from MONOWAI.
The personnel:
- CDR Larry Robbins retired from the RNZN in 2000
- WGCDR Craig Inch retired from the RNZAF in 2005 as a Group Captain
- FLT Bruce Craies retired from the RNZAF in 2001 as a Squadron Leader
- Kate Coughlan is now Editor of NZ Life and Leisure magazine.
Previous | Contents | Next