Crew on a Northland rescue helicopter winched four people to safety - including an 11-year-old - in rough seas from a boat missing off the Bay of Plenty coast.
The Northland Emergency Services Trust (NEST) rescue helicopter was in Auckland when it was called to search for a 5.5m runabout that was reported lost.
Four people were winched off the boat by the Northland Electricity rescue helicopter shortly after 1pm yesterday, and were taken to hospital to be checked over.
The boat, with two men and three others aged 16, 12 and 11 on board, set off from Maketu, 30km from Mount Maunganui, for a snorkelling trip at 8.30am on Monday.
But as weather conditions worsened a family member received a text message from the boat about 11.30am asking for the Coastguard to be called because the vessel was lost.
Poor weather meant the Northland helicopter was grounded in Auckland late on Monday, waiting for the conditions to clear.
Fog closed Tauranga Airport yesterday morning but once it dispersed the skies were clear.
Northland rescue chopper pilot Pete Turnbull said the search was co-ordinated by the national Rescue Co-ordination Centre, who were very organised in giving them, another helicopter and a fixed-wing plane specific grid-reference areas to search.
Often searches at sea are in a narrow area because the boat engine is broken or the boat is just floating, but the search area threatened to be bigger because the boat was thought to be still moving.
Mr Turnbull was supervising new pilot Bruce Joy on the trip.
Later, after the search resumed when the weather cleared, the Tauranga helicopter - the smallest used in rescue operations - a Squirrel - spotted the boat at sea 15km north of Tauranga, just before 1pm.
Its crew contacted the Northland helicopter, which Mr Joy then positioned in order for winch operator Mark Going to lower paramedic Rod Gemmell on to the boat.
The sea was "pretty rough, with a lot of white caps", Mr Turnbull said.
The crew lifted a 40-year-old man and the three youngsters into the helicopter, while the boat's skipper stayed on his vessel and was assisted by the Coastguard.
There was no emergency need for the rescue but "we were there anyway", and the group had been out all night "bobbing around" in unpleasant conditions, Mr Turnbull said.
"They were immobile at that stage so they may have run out of fuel.
"They certainly weren't distressed, and there was no sign of seasickness. It was a fairly warm night too, so no danger of hypothermia," Mr Turnbull said.
While one of Northland's helicopters was in the Bay of Plenty, Northland would have been well-covered in an accident, NEST chairman John Bain said.
If an incident happened in Northland while one helicopter was out of the region, there would be plenty of cover thanks to NEST's second rescue chopper.
"It's something to be pretty proud of, to have our area covered as well as assisting in another part of the country," Mr Bain said.
Northland's two rescue helicopters are sought after thanks to their state-of-the-art machinery, including weather-tracking devices, search equipment and the winch.
Northland chopper rescues four at sea
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