Dinghy With Two Men Aboard Missing

Chronicle (Levin), 7 November 1949, Page 3

Dinghy With Two Men Aboard Missing

WELLINGTON, Nov. 6. Last seen drifting helpless iu higk seaa in Wellington harbour a dinghy with possibly two men aboard had not been traeed by ©xhaustive searching late tonight. The dinghy was noted in difficulties at" Worser Bay about 5.30 p.mf. It tried to make Bhore but the heavy southerly drove it into mid-channel. A search by the piiot launch Arahina and a coastal patroi was maintained tili 9 p.m. and police cars are patrolling the coast road throughout the night. A motoriat driving on a back road near Linden tonight says his car was blown backwards by the high southerly gale which swept Wellington today. He said he was going up a slight grade at iietween eight and ten miles an hour. Then a gust came over the hill and blew his 10 h.p. car back. "I ripped it ii*to low gear and that saved me," the diiver said. At the risk of his own life a Worser Bay launch owner gallantly rescued two men in a dinghy from the teeth of the southerly gale in Wellington harbour today. He is Mr. J. Patchett, who drove his 18ft. launch Huia through the high southerly seas to rescue Rex Garrett and Ted Felther, of Seatoun. They were fishing in a 12-foot dinghy off Seatoun when the southerly spraug up alniost without warning. In spite of their efforts to make shore they were blown rapidly down the harbour and before long they were almoat, out of sight in the driving rain squalls and spray. When Mr. Patchett was told of the dinghy 's plight he immediately put out into the gale., His launch pitching and tossing alniost smothered by the breaking waves, he headed after the fast drifting dinghy. The most dangerous part of his task came when he overtook the dinghy in a most exposed part of the channel botween Ward Island and1 Scorching Bay wliere the seas were rolling almost eight feet high. The launch came broadside to the waves as she turned to pick up the dinghy, Mr. Patchett said afterward. He thought she would turn over. However, a line was flung to the dinghy and made fast. After a hard battle agaiust the gale the launch and dinghy were welcomed at Seatoun wharf by a crowd of over 200.