Burning shirt as beacon

Press, 23 April 1979, Page 6

Burning shirt as beacon

A flaming shirt tied to the end of a spear-gun led rescuers to four marooned Wellington fishermen on Saturday evening, says the Press Association.

A Tawa mechanic, Graham Bagrie, aged 20. set out with four friends to go fishing at 2 p.m., but off the north side of Mana Island the outboard motor on his 4m runabout got water in it and would not start.

He put his anchor down just beyond the breaker line and the four youths

settled down to wait for rescue. “It got dark quite quickly, and there was no moon, so it was very’ dark,” Mr Bagrie said. "We could not even see one another. “We just shut up and fished because there was nothing else we could do." They' let off two flares they had on board, but there was no response. Mr Bagrie's father alerted the police when the boys did not return by 8 p.m. and a launch from the Mana Cruising Club

started searching at 9.30 p.m. “I knew they would not be able to see us without some light, so I just kept ripping off pieces of shirt, soaking them in petrol, and lighting them up,” Mr Bagrie said. When the launch crew first saw the makeshift flare they were five miles away, they thought it might be a fire on the beach. At 11 p.m. they found the runabout and towed it back to Paremata.