Dave the double volunteer

Dave at the controls of TECT Rescue.

Volunteers are the lifeblood of the Tauranga Coastguard Unit.

Dave, a local volunteer, is one of the busiest, not only doing a radio shift but also contributing as a member of the ‘wet crew’ that assist on the boats when called by boaties in trouble.

As a radio operator you’ll hear him every second Friday morning, taking the trip reports and passing on the shipping and weather notices to boaties.

The former Royal Navy submariner says he has a number of motivations for volunteering with the coastguard.

“Firstly my love of the sea, secondly my passion for the Bay of Plenty, and thirdly because I wanted to give something back to my community,” says Dave.

He joined the Royal Navy at 15 and spent his time serving on submarines as a sonar operator on both conventional and nuclear submarines and travelling all over the world.

Dave emigrated to New Zealand with his wife and daughter after leaving the service and lived in Auckland for 24 years before moving to the Bay of Plenty in 2005.

“Both my wife Bridget and I felt such a strong affinity to Tauranga that we felt we wanted to give something back to the community that had made us feel so welcome and at home,” says Dave.

“I’ve been to many places around the world in my life, but in my opinion, there is nowhere that I’d rather live than here in the Bay of Plenty.

“We were both still fully employed and I was travelling all over the country when we first moved to Tauranga, so found it difficult to commit ourselves to full time voluntary work but we both started supporting the local Civil Defence organisation as part of their Emergency Response Management Team.

”He went to working four days a week and with the extra time on his hands, joined the Tauranga Volunteer Coastguard in March 2010 where he started as a radio operator.

“And I’m still doing that to this day,” says Dave.

“My desire to also become part of the rescue boats crew had to be put on hold temporarily as, due to my out-of-town work, I couldn’t commit to being on call one week in every four for emergency callouts.

“In 2015, as soon as I fully retired from work I joined the ‘wet Crew’ and became a part of Delta/Red crew and have loved every minute of it since then.

”Being involved in both sides of the operation, as a radio room operator and rescue boat crew, gives Dave a unique insight into the whole organisation and helps him to see how reliant each side of the unit is on each other.

The radio operators do necessary routine and important jobs, logging trip reports, broadcasting weather and shipping reports plus other navigation warnings while monitoring three or four VHF radio channels, including the International Emergency Channel.

It is quiet at times, busy at others.

“The radio operators do a sterling job keeping an eye on the local boating community and ensuring the safety of all those on the water, both in the inner harbour and far out to sea,” says Dave.

“Our radio operators are fully-trained and are familiar with the local area so, with the help of our computerised radio log system and other internet-based systems, can immediately pinpoint the position of any vessel that calls for help.

”On the occasions there’s an emergency on the water - from the breakdowns that occur quite regularly on small (and not so small) vessels at sea, to more serious incidents that may threaten life -the radio operator will take the radio call from the stricken vessel and alert the Tauranga Coastguard duty officer and they will organise for the duty boat crew to be called out to assist.

“In a real life-threatening callout, the duty officer will call the crew who live closest to the Tauranga Coastguard HQ, and who can usually be the fastest to respond to get the rescue boat(s) on the water as quickly as possible.

”The rescue boat crews are the volunteers that the public see most often.

There are four crews (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie and Delta) who are on duty for callout, 24 hours a day, one full week in four.

Each crew has at least one fully-qualified skipper (most crews have two skippers), and at least seven crew members of various experience in their team.

“The vast majority of all four crews are all fully-trained operational crew members, fully conversant and able to operate all the systems and gear on both of our two rescue boats and they also help in the training and mentoring of the newer crew members,” says Dave.

“Every new crew member goes through an intensive induction and basic ‘shore-side’ and ‘on-the- water’ training sessions, before being allocated to a regular crew.

”All wet crew volunteers, new and old, take part in regular training sessions in the classroom and out on the water to ensure their skill levels are kept up to a standard that meets the requirements of the organisation and the Health and Safety at Work Act.

“Like their mates in the radio room, most of the callouts and incidents the wet crew are involved in are the everyday breakdowns and towing jobs, but every so often an incident comes along that tests the abilities of the boat crews,” says Dave.

“It may be a really difficult tow job in very rough seas, or it may be a medical emergency at sea on a vessel who’s crew can’t handle it alone - or, worst case scenario, a vessel sends out an SOS/mayday call to say that their boat is damaged, on fire or sinking, or that someone has fallen overboard and is missing.

”All Coastguard volunteers, radio and wet crew attend mandatory advanced first aid courses every two years and the rescue vessels carry extensive first aid equipment on board.

The Tauranga Volunteer Coastguard is also part of the National Search and Rescue resources that the NZ Police and Maritime New Zealand can call on to help find someone lost at sea off a boat or washed out from land.

“These sort of scenarios are what we all train for and are, of course, the most challenging but, at the end of the day, that’s why we all join up as volunteers,” says Dave.

“The satisfaction of getting someone’s loved one back safely from an incident at sea is indescribable, as is the sadness we all encounter when we fail to find someone lost out there, or we find them but it’s too late to save their lives.

“I have never regretted joining Tauranga Volunteer Coastguard and intend to give my time as long as I am physically able.

”Volunteers are the lifeblood of the coastguard and they are the locals who live in our community and help our local boating community.

Tauranga Volunteer Coastguard and the cluster unit in the Bay of Plenty are very dependent on local volunteers to ‘save lives at sea’, but on the flip-side, are very dependent on the local members’ funding through local membership, says unit manager Steve Russell.

“We need our local boaties to support our local units through new membership and our existing members ensuring they renew annually with their local units.

Local units are where the ‘rubber hits the road’ when it comes to saving lives at sea.

As the saying goes ‘buy local, keep it local’.


The volunteer coastguard relies on people like Dave who gives of his time and experience.


Dave in the radio room where he started with the Tauranga Volunteer Coastguard.


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