Kayaker's widow laments missing full signal

The wife of an Australian adventurer presumed drowned off the Fiordland coast said if authorities had let her listen to his full distress message the night he disappeared it could have made all the difference to him being found.

Andrew McAuley, the 2005 Australian Geographic Adventurer of the Year, was kayaking across the Tasman Sea from Tasmania to Milford Sound when he sent out a distress call about 80km from shore on February 9.

Searchers later found his kayak but his body was never recovered.

Mr McAuley's wife, Vicki, told the Invercargill Coroner's Court at Mr McAuley's inquest yesterday that the Rescue Co-ordination Centre would not play her the entire recording of his distress call the night he disappeared.

However, after listening to part of it a number of times that night she believed it was him, she told the court.

She had asked to listen to the remainder of the message but was told it was indecipherable.

"I believe this was a critical decision and had I been allowed to listen to the message I could have without doubt identified Andrew's voice and it would have allowed Paul (kayak designer Paul Hewitson) to calculate Andrew's position that night. The search could have commenced from Paul's co-ordinates that night or at least first thing in the morning. That could have made all the difference." She later said in court she appreciated the efforts of the rescue centre and appreciated they did the best they could with the information available.

Rescue Co-ordination Centre New Zealand operations manager John Seward, who was on duty, said they treated the call as genuine and from Mr McAuley. A helicopter was sent out after estimating his position, and ships were redirected in the area to look for him.

Adverse weather forced the helicopter pilot to return to base.

He had not let Mrs McAuley listen to the rest of the call because it was indecipherable and he did not want to distress her, he said.

The RCC staff then lost 25 minutes dealing with an emergency in the North Island before returning to Mr McAuley's distress call.

The court heard Mr McAuley had set off from Tasmania in December but aborted the crossing after 24 hours because of hypothermia concerns and to fix overloading issues.

He restarted the voyage on January 11 but after capsizing and losing his GPS tracking device and one of his two satellite phones, Australian Search and Rescue authorities requested he turn around when he was 193 nautical miles off the coast of Tasmania.

He declined that request. The Australian authorities offered to drop another phone to him by air but he also declined that offer.

The day before he disappeared, on Thursday, February 8, he sent his wife a txt message confirming his Sunday arrival as planned.

However, the next evening she was told a distress call had been received from a caller identified as "Kayak One" .

She was unsure if that was her husband's call sign.

Mrs McAuley told coroner Trevor Savage she believed the kayak was capsized by a rogue wave when Mr McAuley was desalinating a bag of water, later found in the vessel. She believed a bubble protecting him from the elements filled with water, after earlier being damaged in a violent storm on February 1 when he had capsized a number of times. The bubble would have made the boat difficult to right.

"I believe Andrew would have made a massive effort to recover the kayak, that effort possibly lasting some hours. This effort and being in cold water would most likely have left Andrew hypothermic," she said.

When making the distress call to the rescue co-ordination centre he lost the kayak with his other hand and could not recover it, losing all his safety equipment, she believed.

Mr Savage said he hoped to release his findings before the end of the month.

BROTHER THANKS NZ FOR SUPPORT

Mike McAuley, the brother of Australian adventurer Andrew McAuley, yesterday gave a heartfelt thanks to the people of New Zealand for their support and to the Rescue Co-ordination Centre.

"We had a lot of support and hospitality and really appreciate that," Mr McAuley said following his brother's inquest in the Invercargill Coroner's Court.

There was no bitterness, he said.

However, he was finding his brother's death was still hard to cope with.

"It doesn't go away.

"We were very close, we did a lot of surfing and canyoning together and things like that," Mr McAuley said.

He was "very proud" of his brother's effort in getting so close to New Zealand.

 

- © Fairfax NZ News