Three people have been rescued from a broken down, sinking boat in heavy seas after setting off a distress beacon 40 nautical miles east of the Clarence river on the South Island's northeast coast.
The Rescue Coordination Centre dispatched Life Flight's Westpac Rescue Helicopter to locate the distress beacon at 9am today after it was activated.
The helicopter crew located the stricken vessel Mercury after a short search.
The boat with three people on board was drifting with no power in seas estimated to be between six and eight metres. It was taking on water and slowly sinking.
Winching directly onto the boat was deemed by the helicopter crew to be too dangerous, so the paramedic was deployed into the water where she swam to the Mercury and prepared the three crew members for rescue.
The group had life jackets but no working radios, the helicopter service says.
All three were successfully winched onboard and transported to Wellington Hospitals Emergency department for further assessment and treatment.
Life Flight's Westpac Rescue Helicopter crewman Julian Burn says without their distress beacon there's no way the helicopter crew would have found them and the chances are very high they may not have survived given the sea conditions and a boat with no working engine.
They had left Lyttleton some hours earlier bound for Whangamata on their first trip in the boat they had just bought.
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