AGM 2020
At the AGM held on 20 August 2020 the Constitution was amended so that a President can now have a term of three years. Previously the term for Presidernt was two years.
Summary of Incidents
Coastguard Whakatane usually attend about 70 incidents and calls for assistance each year and provided many thousands of radio reports and trip reports, sometimes over 400 per day. Whakatane Rescue is called out about 40 times to provide assistance to members and others. The time spent helping boaties by our rescue vessels is over 500 manhours each year. In addition, our radio Operators logged 25,000 calls to and from boatees. These calls are made up of 22,000 VHF calls, 400 SSB calls and 2,000 phone calls. The main problems experienced by boaties are motor failures, steering problems and flat batteries. Incidents resulting in Whakatane Rescue call-outs were for recovering people in the water from capsized boats, people being washed out to sea, and search and rescue missions for missing boaties. There were a number of capsizes on Whakatane, Thornton, Ohiwa and Opotiki bars so extra care is needed when crossing these bars.
Sponsorship Programme
In 2015 Whakatane Coastguard established a new sponsorship programme consisting of business agreements with sponsors. The programme is based on our website, particularly the Barcam Page. Each year our website has nearly half a million page views. These come from marine orientated internet users from all over the world. The average monthly visits the our website are over 35,000 per month. Three sponsorship plans are offered to organisations that are willing to financially support Whakatane Coastguard activities. The sponsorships levels are $500, $1000, and $4,5000 and each level provide sponsors different levels of exposure on the Barcam Page, Page Footers and promotion over our VHF radio network. Interested parties should contact Whakatane Coastguard Headquarters for more information.
Membership and Support
For many years the membership of Whakatane Coastguard has remained constant at about 1000 members. This makes our Coastguard one of the largest in New Zealand and we try hard to service members needs by providing search and rescue services and a radio communications network. During the past year we either attended or assisted over 60 incidents where our members or members of the public have been in trouble. We would like to thank the many individuals, organisations and businesses who have supported us with funds, products and services over the years and helped us in our quest to "save lives at sea".
