Safer boating at the turn of a dial

Weather in the South Taranaki bight can run from benign to belligerent in a matter of minutes and recreational boaties can sometimes be caught out.
But for the hundreds of boat owners who use Wanganui as their launching place, their safety has just been greatly enhanced with the commissioning of a new weather service.
 The Coastguard's NowCasting weather service  gives real-time up-to-the-minute weather forecasts virtually every minute of every hour seven days a week.
And yesterday Bill Greening, vice-president of Coastguard Wanganui, said the new service would make this coastline "a hell of a lot safer".
Mr Greening said until now boaties were relied on daily forecasts, while radio operators updated the conditions "as best they could".
"But this new service is ideal because it updates conditions virtually every minute of the day," he said. "We've got more than 700 boats on our register and it's not uncommon to have more than 100 boats out at a time; so you can see how important this will be for us." 
The latest marine weather information can be accessed by turning on marine VHF radios.
The NowCasting service will give out spoken information on weather conditions at critical locations within the VHF radio coverage area of Wanganui and broadcast the updates continuously on marine VHF radio, channel 21.
Broadcasting from Bastia Hill, the new service provides local marine wind strengths, as well as the latest marine weather forecast, local tide times and heights and local safety messages if they are needed.
Data will be constantly gathered from the Wanganui foreshore, Paraparaumu, Stephens Island and Farewell Spit, as well as the Maui Platform, to give a complete report of the South Taranaki Bight wind patterns as well as the weather likely to move on to the coast.
Mr Greening said this continuous stream of weather information will let skippers make better decisions about starting or continuing their journeys.
NowCasting means the Coastguard will get data from automatic anemometers positioned at various sites, which report wind strength and direction every 60 seconds. That data is received by a central computer and then broadcast on VHF radio Channel 21 within seconds.
Mr Greening said now the service was up and running "we're encouraging boaties to fit a marine VHF radio and make the most of this service to enhance their safety and enjoyment on the water".
He said they wanted to acknowledge the assistance of PowerCo and NZ Community Trust.