Champion Hawke's Bay pilot to the rescue as kayaker drifts away

Safe on land, Scott Dunkerley working an airstrip near Te Pohue. A week or so later he was looking for a stricken kayaker in the sea off the west coast. Photo / Paul Taylor

Award-winning Hawke's Bay aerial topdressing pilot Scott Dunkerley has wasted little time adding to his résumé by flying out to sea to find an adventurer who'd been thrown out of his kayak.

More used to views of the Pacific off the east coast of the North Island, Dunkerley made the find off west coast beach Himatangi, near Palmerston North, about 9am last Saturday, just 11 days after Hawke's Bay Today published a story on him being recently named the New Zealand Agricultural Aviation Association's emerging pilot of the year.

In keeping with the job taking him anywhere the work needs to be done, often at short notice, the 33-year-old Napier-based Aerospread pilot had just spread a load on a property between Himatangi and Foxton when an alert went out for a kayaker reported capsized in rough seas, about two kilometres off the coast.

"I'd just dropped the load and they called up, would I mind assisting looking for a kayaker," Dunkerley said.

"Not a problem," he replied, detouring a little from the schedule and soon spotting the stricken kayaker, waving in the wind-flattened sea.

"It wasn't too bad, a bit of a chop, but the wind got him."

In Manawatū because of the workload in the industry in the area - "the wettest I've ever seen it over here" - Dunkerley recorded the position using GPS, alerted the crew on a private fishing boat and circled the kayaker until the boat made the pick-up, followed soon afterwards by the arrival of a Coastguard vessel.

The kayaker appeared to have been doing most things right, including wearing a hi-vis jacket and using a sea-anchor, but may have misjudged the conditions and was at the time heading into the oblivion of the Tasman Sea. The man had also managed to call 111 to alert emergency services.

For the pilot it was another one for the bucket list, barely 20 minutes from start to finish before he was picking up another load.