Rescued rower visits boat before leaving NZ

British rower Jim Shekhdar visited his boat this morning, possibly for the last time.

Mr Shekhdar's boat the Hornette remains on board the government-owned research ship Tangaroa, which rescued him from his failed attempt to row the Southern Ocean to South Africa last month.

The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa) ship had to divert on a 640 nautical mile return trip to rescue Mr Shekhdar, and his boat may now be used to recover costs.

Niwa communications manager Geoff Baird said while the boat remained with Niwa for storage, police were in charge of it.

Police today accompanied Mr Shekhdar to visit the boat so he could take an inventory of its contents before flying home tomorrow.

"We wanted to make sure everything was duly recorded," Mr Baird said.

The Tangaroa was not due to leave port again until December 27, so keeping the 7.8m fibreglass boat there was not a problem.

"At the moment it's causing us a little extra work but it's not causing any undue inconvenience."

Niwa officials and Mr Shekhdar met yesterday and this morning to negotiate over its decision to seize the boat as salvage. Mr Baird said talks were amiable, and declined to comment on Mr Shekhdar's reaction to possibly losing the boat.

Meanwhile Niwa was trying to work out how much the diversion from its survey work cost it, likely to be in the thousands. The cost to the air force was about $100,000 when an Orion was used during the rescue.

Some costs, such as fuel and an extra days' wages for all involved were obvious, but other "opportunity" costs were not, Mr Baird said.

These included the Tangaroa not being to obtain data at specific locations at predetermined times which were part of the Ministry of Fisheries survey Niwa were doing at the time of the rescue.

"Those were unique sets of data that can never be recaptured... You don't want people drowning so you stop things to go and collect them, but nonetheless it was a substantial cost to Niwa."

Three days were lost by diverting to rescue Mr Shekhdar, who had been attempting to become the first person to row solo from New Zealand to South Africa. He was two weeks into his journey when he phoned for help after he was hurt when his boat rolled in a storm 1200km east of Bluff.

Mr Shekhdar has said he does not think the boat can be considered salvage as it was not abandoned and was still seaworthy. He was planning to have it shipped back to Britain.

"Obviously there's a cost to do a rescue like this but you can't squeeze blood out of a stone," he said.

He was already in debt and could not get insurance cover for the journey.

- NZPA