Rena debris counted out in fishing boat sinking

The owner of a boat that sank off the Coromandel coast this week says three possible causes are being investigated, but it definitely didn't hit a container from the Rena.

Rebecca May, a steel-hulled 18 metre longliner boat took on water and sank on Tuesday afternoon.

Owner Dugal MacFarlane said his 34-year-old son Wayne was captain of the boat, estimated to be worth $500,000 to $600,000m and he and his two crew had to abandon ship.

Mr MacFarlane, principal director of the Whitianga-based Tuna Fishing Company that owns three commercial fishing boats, said the crew were adamant the Rebecca May didn't hit a container from the Rena.

"They say they would have known if they had although the possibility it hit a piece of timber or some other debris cannot be eliminated,'' he said.

Mr MacFarlane said other scenarios being explored were an internal malfunction or whether the keel cooling piping system running the length of the vessel underneath had broken off after hitting something.

The 8mm thick steel hull of the Australian-built boat would have been hard to penetrate, he said.

Mr MacFarlane said his son was sleeping while his two crew were taking turns on watch and he only discovered the boat was taking on water after rising about 7.30am and realising it was sitting very low in the water.

He said it was not clear where the water was coming from and, after waking the other sleeping crewman, the three men began trying to pump the water out over several hours using four pumps.

"Due to the amount of water sloshing around in the engine room, the 24-volt pumps short-circuited and burnt out and they could not keep up.

"Once the boat started to go down, it went very fast,'' he said.

The three men abandoned ship into the liferaft, and the emergency beacon was set off and picked up in Wellington by the Rescue Coordination Centre.

The centre issued broadcasts to other vessels in the area and the three men were picked up by the Lady Columbo.

Mr MacFarlane said how much water the boat had taken on was a key issue for Maritime New Zealand investigators and his insurers.

But it was a difficult investigation, he said, because the Rebecca May was buried in about 365m of water.

It would be too expensive to try to recover the boat, he said.

Mr MacFarlane said it was not only the boat but there was about $150,000 of gear and $100,000 of electronic equipment on board.

He and his son were "gutted'' because they had just started their busiest fishing period. Unfortunately, the question of future work for at least one of the two Tauranga crew members was now up in the air, because there was limited space on the firm's other two boats.

- Sandra Conchie of the Bay of Plenty Times