Masterton's Deputy Mayor Graham McClymont would love to have been whistling Tony Bennett's In the Middle of an Island yesterday but had to settle instead for grappling with a broken-down digger in the centre of Henley Lake.
One of two diggers making their way to an island due to be reconfigured to make way for a dragon boat and waka ama course got swamped and stopped, due in part to wave action on the lake.
Mr McClymont and his daughter Sophie had to take a boat out to rescue the driver of the digger and to pick up the other driver who succeeded in getting the other digger on to the island.
Both machines were 25-tonne diggers and Mr McClymont said an inspection of the stranded digger showed the starter motor was underwater.
"We will probably need to get a bulldozer out to it and winch the sucker back to dry land," he said.
