A young woman is winched from the sea by helicopter off the Marine Parade coast. Photo Warren Buckland
A young woman is winched from the sea by helicopter off the Marine Parade coast. Photo Warren Buckland
A teenager struggling for her life in notorious heavy surf off Napier’s Marine Parade was talking to police on her cellphone when she was saved by two officers swimming to her rescue.
A minute or so later, 51-year-old father-of-two Senior Constable Andrew Chantrey was using the same phone to call “police comms” to check how long it would be before “the chopper” would arrive to get them out of some of the year’s coldest surf on the coast.
“It was about 20 minutes,” he told Hawke’s Bay Today as he spoke publicly for the first time about the drama that unfolded on Wednesday afternoon, and the moment he and trained and kitted lifeguard Constable Ryan Gordon made the rescue about 100 metres offshore from a point between the Soundshell and the Pania of the Reef statue.
Senior Constable Andrew Chantrey with Hawke's Bay Today's photo of himself, fellow officer Ryan Gordon and the rescued woman awaiting held on Wednesday. Paul / Taylor
But there was another performer in the rescue, which was completed when the Lowe Corporation Hawke’s Bay Rescue Helicopter lifted first the 19-year-old and then Chantrey back to shore while Gordon was taken aboard Port of Napier pilot vessel Pania.
While Chantrey had stripped to “undies” and police issue shirt before leaping into the waves, the 19-year-old was struggling in jeans, puffer jacket and shoes, but the officer said: “It would be good to give the girl some credit for keeping calm and staying out there rather than trying to fight the waves.”
It wasn’t the first time he’d had come to rescue in such circumstances, revealing that in December 2021 he grabbed a police vacuum cleaner extension cord – in the absence of any other rescue aids - to help rescue another teen trying to save a 5-year-old boy who perished in the waves at the Te Awa end of the beach.
Back on dry land, showered and working his last shift before heading for a school holiday break with the family, he was called to another potential sea drama, with a boat reported in distress between Ahuriri and Westshore.
Fortunately, the boat was no longer in difficulty when the patrol arrived, and Chantrey said: “I didn’t fancy swimming after a boat.”
Senior Constable Andrew Chantrey (right), Constable Ryan Gordon (left) and the rescued woman riding out the waves awaiting the arrival of the rescue helicopter. Photo / Warren Buckland
On Wednesday, he was with boss, acting sergeant and 2009 Napier police shooting victim and survivor Bruce Miller when the alarm was raised, shortly before 2.30pm.
Gordon was at the Napier Police Station, with his wetsuit and flotation gear in his car nearby.
Chantrey said he was with Miller near the water’s edge when he decided he’d have to go into the water.
Waiting for someone to bring a rescue belt, he could see the girl was starting to struggle, and decided he had to get into the sea.
Miller asked if he felt “confident” in going in, and as he hit the water he yelled to the girl “stay where you are.”
“The point I want to make,” he said, after what was the latest of numerous rescue situations, some fatal, on the Napier coast over the last 30 years, “is that if you don’t feel confident don’t go in. We don’t want to have any more to rescue.”
The girl and a 19-year-old male had been standing on a stormwater outlet pipe near the brow of the beach when they were hit by a wave, in conditions that had been severe for several days, and had closed the nearby public viewing platform.
The pair were rolled down the steep and loose-shingled beach, where the male was lying prone and exhausted when help arrived.
Both teenagers were taken to hospital by ambulance but discharged a few hours later.
