Very busy weekend for Marine Rescue Hawkesbury

by Ken McManus on 18 Sep 2011 Last Friday night, most of the duty volunteers at Marine Rescue Hawkesbury were enjoying an eagerly anticipated sleep after a full day’s work painting Hawkesbury 70, one of only two accredited Water Ambulances in NSW. Then at 10:30pm came a call from Broken Bay Water Police. A vessel was stranded on rocks some 500m west of the F3 road bridge.

Duty crew Peter Moore, John Mc Closkey and Moyna Boulden responded in the unit’s second rescue vessel, Hawkesbury 10, the state’s other Water Ambulance, and collected three police officers from the rocky shore beneath the F3 on the way to the incident.

On arrival, the crew found a distressed female on a partly submerged dinghy that was attached to a large punt stranded on the rocks and taking water.

Marine Rescue Hawkesbury took the female and the punt’s skipper on board and transferred them to shore at Deerubbin Reserve. Both were safe but cold. The rescue crew returned to base at 11:30pm.

On Saturday morning the Marine Rescue crew returned to the stranded punt and collected a significant amount of floating debris that had come from the vessel.

On Saturday night at 11:45pm a call was received to take Ambulance officers to a medical emergency at Peat’s Bight near Milsons Passage. The patient was stabilized and then transported back by Hawkesbury Marine Rescue crew to Mooney Mooney where an ambulance was waiting to take the patient to hospital. Hawkesbury 10 was closed down at 1:55am.

At 2:55am, the Hawkesbury crew was called out again to take ambulance officers to a suspected heart attack victim on board a boat located some 5km away in America’s Bay in Ku-Ring-Gai Chase National Park. The patient was examined and the ambulance officers diagnosed the illness as a diabetes event. The patient was successfully treated and able to remain on the boat.

Marine Rescue Hawkesbury crew and ambulance officers returned to base at Mooney Mooney at Marine Rescue NSW website