{"id":177884,"date":"2025-12-10T21:28:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T21:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/177884\/"},"modified":"2025-12-10T21:28:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T21:28:10","slug":"drunken-skipper-travis-whiteman-fined-for-reversing-into-swimmers-with-propellor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/177884\/","title":{"rendered":"Drunken skipper Travis Whiteman fined for reversing into swimmers with propellor"},"content":{"rendered":"

The group, aged 21 to 23, consumed food and alcohol on board.<\/p>\n

A police breath test of Whiteman three hours after the women were injured returned more than 250 micrograms of alcohol per litre of breath, which is the limit for driving on New Zealand roads. There is no alcohol limit for skippers<\/a> on the sea in New Zealand.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring the day, he had drunk a reasonable amount of alcohol \u2013 that seems extraordinary,\u201d Judge Arthur Tompkins said.<\/p>\n

At one point the two victims went for a swim.<\/p>\n

Judge Tompkins said the alcohol-affected Whiteman, not seeing where the victims were, put the boat into reverse and hit the two women with the propeller of the outboard motor.<\/p>\n

Both victims have name suppression.<\/p>\n

One victim had three permanent scars and said in her impact statement she genuinely thought she was going to die from the bleeding on the hour-long trip back to the mainland.<\/p>\n

\u201cI find myself wondering how differently things might have gone if help had been called straight away,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She said she continued to have ongoing psychological effects from the trauma and avoided water-based activities now.<\/p>\n

The other victim also spoke of visible scarring and physical, emotional and practical impacts from her injuries.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth of us were terrified,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She said the skipper discarded alcohol bottles from the boat when he should have been calling emergency services.<\/p>\n

Whitman\u2019s lawyer said that this point was incorrect and ambulances were waiting for the boat on the mainland, which indicated an emergency call was made. He also questioned the seriousness of the victims\u2019 injuries and raised the fact they had also been drinking.<\/p>\n

Judge Tompkins wasn\u2019t having it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s coming very close to victim-blaming, Mr Wood,\u201d he responded.<\/p>\n

Both victims said Whiteman had shown no remorse or taken any responsibility. He pleaded guilty on the morning his judge-alone trial was due to begin.<\/p>\n

Judge Tompkins said Whiteman was the only one responsible for skippering the boat.<\/p>\n

He fined the defendant $3600 for each of the two charges and also ordered him to pay $4000 reparations to each victim.<\/p>\n

Waikato Regional Council<\/a> took the prosecution against Whiteman and compliance manager Patrick Lynch was in the court to hear the sentencing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis should have been a fantastic day for those four young people, and it was near tragedy, and completely avoidable,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Outside the court, the mother of one of the victims said the girls would not have gone on the boat if she had known the skipper would be drinking.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoys, drinking and big boats don\u2019t mix, it should be like cars: no drinking,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The problem was that in New Zealand there were no rules against drinking while skippering a boat<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to change legislation to make sure that happens, boating and drinking shouldn\u2019t occur,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Lynch also thought that a change to the legislation was long overdue.<\/p>\n

Recreational harbourmaster for Waikato, Hayden Coburn, was also at court and said even if it was not against the law his message to skippers was clear.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s to be no drinking by the person responsible for the vessel and for the crew and their safety on board the vessel,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

And he said that should be for the whole time of the planned trip.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the preparation before they go out, that\u2019s during the boating, and that\u2019s the follow-up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lynch hoped the prosecution served as a warning.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to send a very specific deterrence to this skipper about his behaviour on this occasion, and we want to send a general deterrence to other skippers who are thinking about drinking and skippering,\u201d Lynch said.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, the victim\u2019s mother said healing continued for the two young women.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe girls are recovering but obviously the psychological scars take longer than the physical scars,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The group, aged 21 to 23, consumed food and alcohol on board. A police breath test of Whiteman…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177885,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[108248,19631,2082,42,296,40730,1953,43,113803,38951,76350,87540,40,38,41,39,4942,113802,102],"class_list":["post-177884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-drunken","tag-fined","tag-for","tag-headlines","tag-into","tag-kirkbymcleod","tag-libby","tag-news","tag-propellor","tag-reversing","tag-skipper","tag-swimmers","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-travis","tag-whiteman","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}