KEY POINTS:
Barrie Oakley's first thought as the boat started sinking was to save his mobile phone.
The Auckland bar manager was out on a fishing trip when his friend Alan Rayner's 4.8m boat Mopsy filled with water and capsized in Tamaki Strait.
"So I dived to get my phone," Mr Oakley told the Herald last night. "I was thinking it's a $500 phone and I don't want to lose it.
"It didn't really dawn that this was a bit of a situation."
His instincts turned out to be right. By holding the phone in one hand and clinging to the bow of the sinking boat with the other, Mr Oakley was able to phone the Coastguard to be rescued - even though he couldn't tell them where the boat was.
"There were no boats around. I think a passing ferry actually told the emergency services where we were.
"I tried to describe the surrounding areas. I said we're sort of on the way between Waiheke Island and Bucklands Beach.
"The scary thing was the fishing lines were stuck around our legs. It's kind of ironic the things were stuck around us when we were trying to catch fish."
Both men were wearing lifejackets and used fuel canisters to help them float until they were picked up by a Coastguard boat about 1.8km south of Motuihe Island.
The rescued men were taken to shore and their boat was towed to Calypso Bay, where it was found to have a hole in it.
The rescue was among a record number of New Year calls handled by the Coastguard.
The service has answered 70 calls - most from boats with mechanical problems or which were sinking, had run aground or were out of fuel - compared with 43 in the same period last year.
The Tamaki Strait rescue followed a call from four people on a boat that had dragged its anchor and been washed on to rocks between the Noises, near Motuhoropapa Island.
Minutes later a mayday call was received from two people on a 10m yacht that was taking on water about 1.5km south of Tiritiri Matangi.
The Coastguard also responded to calls about a foreign exchange student who was stuck in a drifting runabout off Eastern Beach, and two people who fell out of an inflatable boat near Kohimarama Beach.
In between the rescues, Coastguard operations staff were also receiving dozens of trip reports - similar to aircraft flight plans - from boaties.
Coastguard spokeswoman Joanne Ottey said calls for the first three days of 2007 were up nearly 30 on the same period last year.
She attributed the increase to the pockets of good weather which prompted everyone to go sailing at the same time.
