Dad sentenced on boat deaths

JOHN SELKIRK/The Dominion Post

COMMUNITY SERVICE: Lindsay Rowles after the sentencing.

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An Auckland boatie whose children drowned when the family runabout "went down like the Titanic" in Hauraki Gulf failed to do the most basic safety checks, an Auckland court has been told.

Lindsay Terrence Rowles, 55, formerly of Devonport, was sentenced in North Shore District Court yesterday to 250 hours' community service after pleading guilty to operating a boat in a manner causing unnecessary danger or risk.

His two children, Travis, 5, and Erina, 8, were asleep in the cabin, heads resting on their lifejackets, when the boat sank on Anzac Day last year.

Maritime NZ lawyer Mark Davies told the court Rowles took his family out fishing just hours after paying $28,000 for the boat, a boat trailer and a Mitsubishi Pajero.

Without doing any safety checks, he launched the 6.7-metre aluminium boat at Torpedo Bay in Devonport "with an apparent lack of experience", according to witnesses, then set off for Palm Beach, Waiheke Island, where they were joined by two other adults.

They remained docked there for several hours, drinking alcohol before moving on to Onetangi. Rowles told the investigator some also smoked cannabis, but said he did not.

At some time during the day, he found a drainage bung inside the boat and got several of the group to dive into the water to look for the hole. When no one could find any, he decided no bungs were missing.

Ten minutes after someone, possibly his son, turned on the bilge pump, Rowles turned it off. Despite water "spewing" over the side and he being a "little concerned" that the pump was on, he did not look to see where it was being pumped from.

Instead, the group went to the RSA for dinner, bought more alcohol, then went night fishing off Tarahiki Island.

Rowles said he was "relatively sober" when he went below at midnight and slept between his two children. His lawyer, Geoff Anderson, said Rowles woke to find the mattress was wet and, in a panic, decided to ground the boat in a bid to save them, while his wife, Tania, who had been fishing off the back of the boat, went below to be with the children.

Mr Anderson said Rowles said the boat "went down like the Titanic".

Mrs Rowles was holding on to them when the boat sank but she may have been knocked out, for the next thing she knew she was on the surface, her children nowhere in sight, he said.

A Maritime NZ expert said that, when the boat grounded, its front lifted, sending the water rushing to the rear.

Earlier this year, Rowles was convicted of cruelty to an animal after he grabbed a pet mouse from a woman's cleavage and bit off its head.

At a separate hearing, he admitted driving with excess breath alcohol and possessing drug utensils and cannabis.

He and his wife now live on Waiheke Island, where they own a sex shop.

- © Fairfax NZ News