KEY POINTS:
Auckland's Coastguard experienced two days of record callouts as boaties flocked to the water over Anniversary Weekend.
Last Saturday Coastguard responded to 39 incidents on the water, a record that lasted just one day. Sunday produced 40 emergencies.
The most curious of the callouts surrounded the abandonment of two children on Tiri Island after a domestic dispute.
The children's father had apparently taken his boat out to sea after an argument and then found himself unable to beach it again in the choppy conditions.
Despite near-perfect weather on Sunday, two boats were swamped, a yacht capsized by the Harbour Bridge and another dismasted after sailing into moorings.
One of the swampings had the potential to end in tragedy. The Coastguard was notified by members of the public about a 4m tinnie that had begun sinking 500m off Army Bay in Whangaparaoa. The badly overloaded boat contained six people, believed to be members of the same family.
The second swamping occurred off Maraetai, where the Coastguard rescued two men who had been knocked out of their dinghy.
But most of the callouts were because of mechanical failure.
Anniversary Weekend seems to be a time when many of the region's one-day-a-year fishos scrape their boats off the lawn and take to the water.
A lack of engine servicing and old fuel were the main reasons many of these boaties broke down at the weekend, said Coastguard Northern Region operations officer Michael Lawrence. Most who needed help were not Coastguard members.
"The members tend to do the courses, get all the information and be a bit more prepared," Lawrence said.
The level of boat traffic over the period can make it a great time to do something other than fishing. At peak times over last weekend Coastguard radio received more than 100 trip reports (TRs) an hour.
For every report filed, Coastguard estimates at least three other boats set off without logging their trip.
Doing the maths, that means at peak times the numbers of boats on the inner Gulf would have been in the thousands.
At Halfmoon Bay on Saturday, boat trailers lined the surrounding streets up to a kilometre from the ramp. Queues to get back in at the end of the day could stretch up to an hour or more.
If that's your idea of a good day out then good luck to you. I did my fishing on Friday afternoon and Monday night. Give me 20-knot souwesters, choppy seas and a bit of solitude over millpond conditions and boats stacked up in their hundreds in the channels anyday.
The wisdom of that thinking, however, looked a touch questionable on Monday night when our skipper - Mike the neighbour - failed to give the order for the sea anchor to be pulled in before taking off (the buck always stops with the skipper).
Given the high wind and the fact that we were fishing exclusively with soft baits, the lack of a sea-anchor to slow our drift seemed likely to be fatal to our fishing prospects.
Happily, though, former commercial fisherman Mike didn't take long to resolve the problem. A plastic bucket inserted into a landing net trailed behind the boat did the job perfectly.
The result was 10 nice snapper landed in good time and a quick trip home - with no assistance from the Coastguard.
Another useful tip provided by Mike: When returning late at night, rather than spending all night filleting, stack your fish vertically in a chilly bin (belly down) and side by side. This is the way whole fish are prepared for the export market, and prevents the guts tainting the fillets.
Next put your whole bin in a chest freezer. By morning the fish will be chilled right down but not yet frozen - perfect for filleting.
