Trawler’s Crew Safe

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30948, 3 January 1966, Page 3

Trawler’s Crew Safe

(N.Z. Press Association) DUNEDIN, Jan. 2. The crew of a Bluffbased fishing boat, South Wind, were taken to Invercargill in an amphibian aircraft on Saturday after their boat was beached in Preservation Inlet, Fiordland, last week. The boat’s owher, Mr E. Edsall, of Sawyers Bay, said today the South Wind had been left holed in three places and with its rudder broken. However, it was planned to refloat the boat soon.

The South Wind was skippered by Mr D. Campbell. The other members of the crew were Mr S. Ryan and Mr R. Kariatana. Mr Edsall said the boat was moored in Otago’s retreat, a

channel in Preservation Inlet about three-quarters of a mile from the open sea, last Sunday afternoon. The crew were visiting the Puysegur Point lighthouse when the weather began to deteriorate. “But the sea came up so quickly they couldn’t get on board,” Mr Edsall said. About 3 a.m. on Monday the South Wind went ashore. Mr Edsall said it was “just about unheard of” for a fishing boat to move as the South Wind had done. But the light-

house-keeper had said it was the biggest sea he had seen in his four and a half years at Puysegur point. Radio-telephone communication with the South Wind and the lighthouse was almost impossible because of conditions until late last week. Not until Saturday was an aircraft able to fly into Preservation Inlet, and even then flying conditions were bad with “almost no visibility.” Mr Edsall said he expected the cost of salvage to be about £lOOO.