Drifting Launch Is Located By Plane

Chronicle (Levin), 6 January 1949, Page 7

Drifting Launch Is Located By Plane

WELLINGTON, Jan. 5. When the launch Gael set out from Paremata on a fishing trip at 8 a.in. on Tucstlay and had not arrived back last night, relatives of the erew applied to ■ the poliee for assistanee. The police invoked the aid of the seareh and fescue unit of air traffic eontrol and a Harvard plane from the • B.N.Z.A.F. station at Ohakea reported about' 1L45 a.m. today that it had found the missing launch about 15 miles west of the soiithern tip of Kapiti Island, drifting abeam to the waves. In tHe meantime, the launch Ocean Spray wilh Constable B. J. Ruane, pf Paekakariki, on bo'ard, had set out from Paremata to seareh around Kapiti Island. The Harvard, after sighting the Gael, directed the Ocean Spray to the rtsscue and she subsequently took the- Gael in tow. The Gael, whieh is owned by Mr. Alan Austin, had four other men on board — Messrs Bert Banson, Seiview JRoad, Paremata; Pat Austin, son of the owner, Bay View Boad, Paremata; Joe Cooper and Michael' Cooper, brothers, of Hobard Street, Miramar. The Gael has an overall length of 28 feet and is not equipped with sail. On Tuesday there was a keen offshore easterly wind wliich whipped the sea up at times. With nightfall the' wind dropped considerably. From the position in which the launch Avas sighted fronj. the air. it is eonsidered it must have been without the aid of its engine for some timo to drift nearly 20 miles to sea.