Chris, meanwhile had surfaced 300m behind the boat after a 35-minute dive and, despite yelling and raising his flipper, he went unnoticed.
“The zip on my buoyancy compensator was stuck and I couldn’t get it open to get out the orange sausage,” says Chris.
“I tried using my knife to open the zip but felt it too dangerous because I might puncture the buoyancy vest. So I let go of my weight belt and my catch bag and started kicking towards shore.”
Meanwhile, after an hour and a quarter, Matt needed to raise the alarm and phoned a friend on shore who phoned Shane Beech at Maketū Coastguard.
Straight after that call his phone went flat, but there was a marine radio in the boat.
Shane alerted Tauranga police and put out an alert for crew for EastPack Rescue which is moored in the Kaituna River close to the mouth of the river.
“These scenarios of a missing diver develop fast, so I also put out an alert for crew for our second vessel Kohanui Rescue,” says Shane.
Matt had given the mobile phone number of the diver and because it was turned on, its GPS location was able to be established.
“My boatman didn’t panic,” says Chris. “He stayed on the same spot and was able to give the team from Eastpack Rescue a good brief.
“It’s all about survival – I had never been in that position before. I did my dive course in 1979 and I dive 50-75 times a year.
“All I could do was try to swim towards the Pukehina beach.”
Eastpack Rescue arrived at the divers’ boat on the GPS mark and was briefed by Matt as to the timing of the dive, drift pattern, and wind direction.
The crew put a danbuoy into the water to confirm the drift pattern and set up a box section search pattern.
When Chris saw the boat in the far distance, he held up one of his flippers.
The search pattern took Eastpack Rescue in the direction of the likely drift and a crew member spotted the flipper above the waves.
“I was pulled out of the water at 2.30pm – three and a half hours after I had surfaced from the dive and I had drifted almost two miles from the boat,” says Chris.
“The local Maketū Coastguard team was brilliant,” he says. “They did a great job and it is good to know they are there to save people on the water when things go wrong.”
EastPack Rescue has recently been through a full refurbishment which includes new jet units, gearboxes and electronics, says Shane.
■ A week later Maketū Coastguard was called to a drifting boat 5km north of Plate Island on a cold and wet windy day, to help three people on a small boat that included a 3-year-old with no life jacket and no warm clothes.
