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Tauranga man Gordon Stacey thought at times that he was not going to survive parting company with his hired kayak off Rarawa Beach on Monday (Two late decisions save a fisherman’s life, Northland Age February 17). But, he said, yesterday he had two very good reasons for not giving up.
One was his six-year-old son Reece, the other the fact that he had not amended his will after a change in his family circumstances.
The 37-year-old part-time builder was saved by the combined efforts of the Northland Rescue helicopter, Far North Coastguard Radio and three charter fishing boats on Monday afternoon, some four and a half hours after he lost contact with the kayak he had hired at Wagener Park in the hope of freeing his snagged torpedo longline. The story told on Tuesday was correct in almost every detail, he said, but for one – he had in fact been blown out of the kayak a dozen times, even after trying simply to lie across it.
The kayak was subsequently spotted by the helicopter crew four and a half miles off the coast. Gordon was located 3.4 miles from shore, his paddle a 100 metres seaward.
Strong off-shore winds and a 1.5 metre swell, with whitecaps, had made searching difficult, Gordon saying he had to work hard to battle despair even after he spotted the helicopter and charter boats Harlequin, Tagit (which eventually took him aboard) and Mazerine.
The helicopter would come close then veer away to search somewhere else, he said, the crew obviously having difficulty spotting him despite the yellow life jacket he was wearing (and which he credited with saving his life, despite the fact that it was too loose for him and did not have the buoyancy he might have hoped for).
Meanwhile he had made the decision to abandon the kayak after it had been blown some distance from him, preferring to conserve his energy rather than swimming after it. And while the life jacket undoubtedly contributed to his surviving the ordeal, he spent much of his four and a half hours at sea treading water.
A one-time scuba diver, he resisted the urge to panic, however, a factor which his rescuers had told him might well have played a large part in his survival, and did not suffer particularly from the cold, although his chest and arms got a workout of mammoth proportions.
By the time Tagit reached him he no longer had the strength to climb aboard. The Australians aboard, who had been catching kingfish when the alarm was raised by Far North Coastguard Radio (and who gave Gordon one to take home), included a doctor (and several accountants, whose professional skills were not required just at the moment), but he suffered no ill-effects.
He was taken back to Houhora, and set out for home yesterday with his fishing gear intact and whopper of a tale to tell.
Gordon’s main mission yesterday was to thank everyone who had been involved in the rescue, however.
“I don’t like wasting people’s time,” he said, “and I really appreciate everything that was done for me.”
He had been particularly impressed by the rescue helicopter crew, who he described as true professionals, and with the methodical way in which the three charter boat skippers had scoured the sea for him in very trying conditions.
“They formed up 50 metres apart and worked a grid,” he said.
“By the time they got to me I was absolutely exhausted.”
A fixed wind aircraft had flown over him some time before but he had not been seen, and he had spotted the rescue helicopter long before the crew saw him.
“When it flew away to the south I though ‘Oh no,’ but it kept coming back,” he said.
“At one stage I waved the life jacket to try to catch their attention, and even after they’d seen me I waved just to make sure.”
And, in the true tradition of the very best fishing stories, there was one more chapter to come. Gordon hired a local boat to take him out in the hope of finally retrieving his longline, which he did, complete with nine snapper, three of them in the 12-pound range.
(The two late life-saving decisions referred to were to don his life jacket after he had been about to paddle out without it, and to tell a mate what he intended doing. Houhora’s Constable Chris Yarnton said on Monday afternoon that failing to take either of those precautions would almost certainly have cost Gordon his life).
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