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Serious fishing was overtaken by near disaster when a chartered fishing boat with seven men on board was driven by high winds into rocks below the remote North Cape lighthouse in the Far North on Sunday night.
When a rescue helicopter could do nothing in poor visibility and howling winds, it was left to the skill and experience of a rescue-boat skipper and his crew to secure the charter boat and tow it to safety without injury.
The Whakatane-based, 16m fishing-charter boat, Pursuit, was on the first day of a planned six-day trip to the Three Kings Islands and had left Mangonui on Sunday morning with five paying clients, a skipper and a deckhand.
On board was Herald fishing and rugby league reporter Peter Jessup, who has made the trip north several times before.
Yesterday, after returning to Mangonui five days earlier than expected, he and another fisherman on Pursuit praised the "awesome" efforts of Aucklander Geoff Lamont and his crew on game boat Outer Limits, who came north from Houhora to rescue Pursuit. The pair also acknowledged the skills of their own skipper, charter-boat operator Rick Pollock.
Jessup said the group arrived off North Cape at about 4pm on Sunday and started fishing. They were sheltering from northeasterlies and waiting for the wind to abate before heading north to the Three Kings or going west past Cape Reinga and down the west coast.
"We were all relaxed, sitting down around 7.30pm and thinking we were in for a sweet night.
Without warning, there was a bump, bump. The skipper and the deckie sprinted off. They knew what had happened."
He said a sudden, huge rogue wind gust from the south or southwest came from behind the boat and drove it bow first between two rocks below the North Cape light. The boat's anchor couldn't be used to hold the vessel and Mr Pollock called Far North Radio Coastguard for help.
Jessup said they were told to prepare to be winched off Pursuit by rescue helicopter, but when conditions made that impossible, they settled down to wait for Outer Limits.
"That skipper did an awesome job in a pitching swell. They had to row in to us to put a line on. We filled our boat with water - even the fish and chilly-bins - to act as ballast to stop us bashing around on the rocks."
Pursuit, which is believed to have sustained substantial damage, was pulled free and towed south to Houhora Harbour.
