Coast Guard skipper Allan Tennent discussing a search with Water Police. Photos: Supplied.
BY HARVEY SHORE
Recently, Coast Guard volunteers in Moreton Bay and the Redlands area have spent hours and days on Search & Rescue (SAR) operations, after drifting boats were found with no one aboard.
The concern when an empty vessel is found is that someone is in the water and needs to be rescued.
So Coast Guard volunteers are urgently called out from their homes or jobs to search … sometimes all day or night, in all weather, looking for a possible distressed person in the water.
In most cases, the searchers later discover the vessel has simply broken loose and drifted away, and its owner is safe at home, completely unaware that their vessel has been found drifting and that scores of people are out searching for them. Meanwhile, volunteers spend massive amounts of time and precious resources for nothing.
All this waste might easily have been avoided if the owners had put their name and contact details on their vessels.
Unfortunately, many owners haven’t bothered taking that simple step. Most small craft are found without any identification marks.
Coast Guard units are urging owners of small craft to PUT YOUR NAME AND CONTACT DETAILS ON YOUR VESSEL so we can call your number first if a vessel is found adrift. That may save hundreds of hours of volunteer time and allow for the better use of valuable volunteer resources.
It may also save your life, if you went overboard, and someone at home can tell the Search and Rescue volunteers where you launched from.
