Whether it’s plucking crews from sinking ships, finding missing kayakers or saving folks who’ve run out of petrol 20km offshore, helping boaters is all in a day’s work for Marine Rescue NSW Illawarra Inspector Stuart Massey.

But as a paid staff member he’s a rarity – most of this vital organisation is made up of volunteers.

Marine Rescue NSW has 3566 volunteers and Insp Massey oversees the region from Port Kembla to Kioloa, where 474 people are on standby to help boaters in distress.

“We are on call 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, including our radio bases,” he said.

Volunteers come from all walks of life, from cooks and cleaners, to barristers, to police and defence force members. “One of the really important things with our organisation is we put the uniform on – it doesn’t matter where you’ve come from or what you do, it’s what you do while you’re out there and being part of that team.”

With an average age of 60 in Shellharbour, many volunteers are retirees who want to give back. “We have an ageing organisation, but we are getting a lot of younger members through,” Insp Massey said.

“We go out when everybody else is coming back a lot of the time. And we’ll go out in conditions that the average boat doesn’t want to be out in.”

This could mean seas with swells of five to six metres. “Imagine driving down a road, hitting a pothole every 10m that’s about three-foot deep. You can get knocked around a fair bit out there. But our boats are sturdy, our crews are well trained.

“We had a job the other day that went for 22 hours, from start to finish. We had to change crews around for fatigue management.

“For people to risk their own lives, to get out, to save somebody else’s, is just absolutely amazing. The dedication that they have, the training that they put themselves through as well.

“People who give up their time, and that could be at 2am in the morning, it could be at 10 o’clock at night, they’ll go out there for the sole purpose of helping another human.

“I really admire that.”

Hundreds of rescues a year

Insp Massey joined Marine Rescue in 2017 as the zone training manager, drawing on a lifetime’s love of watersports, from surfing to racing Thundercats to four decades as a volunteer surf lifesaver. For anyone who loves boats, he says Marine Rescue is a great opportunity.

In eight years, he has seen “crazy things” at sea, but often they didn’t have to happen.

“We do hundreds and hundreds of jobs every year, half of those are preventable,” he said. “It could be you run out of fuel or have a flat battery. These are things that can be prevented quite easily with some basic maintenance and preparation.”

Other call-outs have involved high-risk situations after skippers have hit something – a rock or a whale – and holed their boats.

“We’ve also had commercial vessels that have have rolled and crew are sitting on the top of those by the time we get there.

“We had one gentleman that was in a canoe, he was fishing down the coast and he’d hooked quite a large fish. The fish took off and he followed it over the side and had to swim to a nearby island. We went out and rescued him … and when we got the canoe and the fishing gear, the fish was still attached.

“He might have got wet and a bit embarrassed, but still had his fish on the end of the line.”

What to know before you go

In the first five months of the year, until press time on May 22, there were 226 search and rescue missions in the Illawarra, 68 of those by the Port Kembla and Shellharbour units, and across the region, Marine Rescue has returned 505 people safely to shore.

The toughest jobs involve rock fishermen washed away, Insp Massey said. “The hardest ones is where it involves a deceased, because somebody’s lost a relative. It’s somebody’s son, it’s somebody’s father, it’s somebody’s grandfather.”

As well as the essentials, like life jackets, weather checks and a seaworthy boat, he recommends boaters take a phone and log onto the free NSW Marine Rescue app – being easy to find could save your life. At publication time, almost 5000 vessels had logged on this year.

“That phone will send us a location every 20 minutes as to where that person is,” Insp Massey said. “We recently had quite an interesting job where a gentleman called and said his boat was taking on water. He was quite calm about it.

“Our boat was doing some training up near Flagstaff Point. By the time they got there, which was only 10 minutes later, this gentleman was standing on the fly bridge of his vessel. So this was like a 45-foot powercraft, a catamaran, and the vast majority of it was underwater.

“This boat had literally just come off the slip, after fairly extensive maintenance. It makes you realise that this could happen to anybody.”

Rescues far offshore can be challenging, with seasicknes and anxiety common.

“At Shellharbour we did one last year where they were about 19km offshore. Now, might not sound that far, but when you’re 19km offshore you might just grab a glimpse of the escarpment, though it’s unlikely. When there’s three or four people on a vessel that’s broken down, they’re not in a good state.

“One of the most rewarding things you can see is the look on somebody’s face when we pull up alongside … The look of relief, the smile when they know that they’re in safe hands, it’s amazing.”

Rewarding work

Helping others is the main incentive for volunteers, but being out on the ocean comes with rewards beyond price.

“In certain times it’s like you’re dodging whales, there’s that many of them out there, dolphins, the bird life, the odd shark swims past. There’s such a variety of marine life,” Insp Massey said.

Not a boater? Volunteers can also staff radio bases, such as the one at Port Kembla’s Hill 60, where sensational views are a bonus.

Volunteers can give ocean-going advice, starting with the need for a boat licence, but Marine Rescue is not a regulatory authority.

“We’ve rescued people that have been miles offshore in a boat that shouldn’t be out there with children, with no life jackets, no safety equipment,” Insp Massey said.

“We don’t issue fines; our job’s to save the people and we’re happy to do that. It does make you a little bit frustrated when you see people putting kids, in particular, in a dangerous situation.”

He encourages everyone to explore the ocean, while watching the weather and remembering the ‘if in doubt, don’t go out’ rule.

“The most important thing is go out and enjoy the water. Know that we are there to assist you and we’re easily contactable on VHF Channel 16 or via the phone. Worst case, dial triple zero.

“Enjoy the ocean. But don’t put yourself at risk for a fish.”

More info: www.marinerescuensw.com.au