MAYDAY MAYDAY

Ever since I did my marine radio operators course I have wondered if I would ever receive (or issue) a Mayday, Pan Pan or Securite call.  Mayday is for when your vessel is sinking.  Pan pan if for any other critical event for which you need urgent assistance (like crew overboard, serious injury, or you are drifting hopelessly away from civilisation.)  Securite is a message advising other ships of hazard (like a beacon missing or a floating obstruction).  As master of the vessel, I am well versed in my responsibilities and stand constantly vigilant and keen to execute my responsibilities.

Well it didn’t happen as I imagined it would.

For a start the mayday did not come through the radio.  It came as a thin, faint yell, which we first mistook for people partying on a nearby cat. Dean heard it first. “ Is that a cry for help?  What’s that in the water out there?”  He was pointing at a small splash of colour almost obscured by the chop about half a mile out to sea. It was in the broad channel between Mission Beach on the mainland and Dunk island, where we were tucked up out of way of a solid 25 kt south easterly.  Whipping out the binoculars*  we could see a yellow and red blob in the water being blown away from the island.  A notable feature of the blob, discernable through the binoculars, was a set of frantically waving arms.  Must be some divers who have lost their tender, I thought, just having spent a couple of days anxiously searching the ocean surface for Karen and Gary to pop up from their dives so I could pick them up in our dingy.

Dean and I clambered into our small dingy and proceeded to investigate. Soon we could see it clearly.  Three men, clad in shorts tee-shirts and life jackets were clinging desperately to a very small, flat bottomed, upturned tinny which was mostly submerged.  The chop was washing over them and they had to hook their fingers on the small ridges in the bottom of the tinny to stop sliding off.  With three of them spread-eagled , the bottom of the boat was completely covered. The youngest of them (perhaps 16 yrs old) was shivering violently.  The engine and a canopy were underneath the dinghy, making it impossible to right.  To put it mildly, they appeared pleased to see us.

The Moonraker Tender is very small and we could only take two of them off in the first go. We selected the two lightest men, to avoid overloading our dinghy.  We gingerly came along side, the older and younger of the men slid awkwardly on board.  The middle-aged one was left on the dinghy, struggling to find a new position, his balance was upset by the absence of the others.

A windy day

 I felt terrible, leaving one, even if only temporarily.  I knew there was no mortal danger, but I felt that if it was me I would have felt scared, lonely and abandoned.  We headed for the island beach where they had mobile phones to call the hire company. By the time we beached them, two other tenders from the ‘party cat’ had arrived, after also noticing the drama.  Luckily, they had tenders better suited to rescue (longer with more powerful engines than ours). Indeed they were later able to tow the upturned dinghy to shore, a feat well beyond our engine capacity. They quickly retrieved the other man, so the whole sunken crew were pretty well on ashore at the same time.

Without further ado, we landed them, and turned our tender back towards our boat.  The older man came over as I was pushing off the beach. He wanted to thank us, and I could see it was important to him.  His emotion spilled out in a very manly way: he grabbed my hand in both of his and shook it till my arm nearly fell off. I assured him that we were pleased to have helped, and that mutual assistance is expected of people at sea. But he wanted to express more.  Finally he said gruffly, “That was the three generations of my family on that boat. Me, my son and grandson. “ I think, when he was on that upturned tinnie, he had seen visions of  an alternative future.

As we returned  to Moonraker, we passed a tiny tinnie identical to the over-turned one, from the same hire company, with four people on board, about to cross the wind-swept, choppy channel to Mission Beach.  They were not wearing life jackets.