Broken down yacht grounded in channel
A 30ft yacht broke down just after departing it's swing mooring in the Porirua Harbour channel by the railway bridge at Paremata. The engine would not restart and the 30+ knot winds quickly blew the yacht onto the sand on the side of the channel.
After trying for a while to winch himself free by using a dinghy to attach a line to a nearby mooring, the skipper eventually placed a Pan Pan call over the VHF radio. The call was responded to by Maritime Radio who passed the call onto Police to activate a response from Coastguard Mana.
Coastguard Mana deployed a crew on CRV Pelorus to go and assist. In the meantime a vessel travelling past noticed the yacht was in trouble and attempted to pull him free using the line he had attached to the mooring. Unfortunately they were not able to attach the line to their vessel properly because it was so tight and their efforts to put leverage on the line were unsuccessful. When Pelorus arrived on scene a plan was made to attach Pelorus to the halyard line on his mast to lean the yacht over while the other vessel attempted to pull him off.
Just as this plan was about to be actioned the combination of weight/levarage on the line from the winch and tow vessel, the wave action and the fluctuating tide meant that the yacht suddenly floated free of the sand and Pelorus quickly moved in and rafted up alongside it to pull it back. We reloacted him back into Mana Marina to the breastworks so that he could do some repair work on the engine.
