What a busy month for callouts! Just as we’re all relaxing and unwinding – but a change is as good as a rest I say. Details on all the callouts are below – thanks Wayne. Operation Smithies was the longest and although the lost subject has now been charged with wasting Police time I agree with Mana Coastguard president Trevor Farmer who said that it was “a valuable experience for his team to be involved in”. You learn something from every callout, we had the new Tait radios to get familiar with (and they work really well) and worked in [...]

November saw some of us head south to the SAR Forum and Conference in Hokitika. I went down early and attended the Forum and AGM on the Friday. The key message from Hadyn Smith (CEO LandSAR) was that local groups need to have a strong focus on raising their own funds. Notwithstanding the current funding shortfall, specifically around training; groups need to have their own funding. I support this wholeheartedly and see a significant chunk of my role dedicated to sourcing some sustainable funding. I have already had a meeting with the National Advisor of the Charities Commission to explore [...]

Just a short chat this month – we postponed our committee meeting due to Operation Manuka which thankfully had an excellent outcome, you can read about that elsewhere in this newsletter. The training session for the new radios was also postponed.