Lucky rescue after hours in water

Press, 7 December 1981, Page 1

Lucky rescue after hours in water

PA Auckland A chance rescue in the Manakau Harbour, entrance early yesterday ended a night-long ordeal in the sea for a man whose runabout caught fire on Saturday night. Bryan Keith, aged 21, of Waiuku, was swept well out to sea after abandoning his burning 5m boat near the harbour entrance. He fought chills, cramp, and despair for 6*2 hours and watched helplessly as an organised search worked its way steadily away from him. Carried back into the harbour entrance when the tide turned, he was found about 3.30 a.m. by Mr Quinn Melbye, of New Lynn, who was heading out for dawn fishing. Mr Melbye said, “I don’t think I would have noticed him if he had not yelled. I flicked on the spotlight and picked him up only 40 to 50 metres away. “He was shivering and shocked but in good condition considering what he had been through.” The search began after the police were told of a boat on fire. Mr Keith rested at the home of friends in Waiuku yesterday. He said, “The worst time was about midnight when I saw the Mangere hovercraft and two other boats working a search pattern away from me.” He had used the two flares he had taken when he abandoned the boat and when the lights of the search vessels

disappeared there was nothing to do but wait. His flotation vest was invaluable, he said. It enabled him to hug his arms tightly across his chest to fight the chill as he conserved his strength by moving his limbs just enough to maintain circulation. “My fear was that I was out too far for the tide to take me back in,” he said. That proved unfounded but when he was carried back in the tide swept him straight into the Manukau channel with little prospect of making it to either shore, when Mr Melbye came within earshot. A medical examination at the Waiuku Coast Guard station revealed nothing worse than exhaustion. He was ordered to take a day off from his job at the Glenbrook steelworks. Mr Keith believed the fire which forced him over the side was started by a spark from a bilge pump igniting spilled fuel. He had transferred fuel from the fuel tanks into a container, spilled some, and washed it into the stern. “I started the bilge pump and that was it,” he said. It was an Americanassembled aluminium runabout but much of the panelling and finishing was flammable. “The wind took it in one direction and the tide took me in. another,” Mr Keith said. Late yesterday he had heard nothing of it and believed it had probably sunk.