\u201cLooked like it was on fire or there was oil pouring out of the engine and creating that smoke,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
After asking the Black Cat skipper if assistance was needed, Wright\u2019s fishing boat took 15 passengers on board.<\/p>\n
Wright said once passengers saw people being safely transferred, other nearby boats moved in to assist.<\/p>\n
A fishing vessel crew who responded to a distress call says passengers were ‘pretty frightened’. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
He said conditions were calm, but the situation was distressing for those on board.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe people were pretty frightened. There were families and young children, and you can imagine it was pretty scary for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wright said his crew helped calm passengers before taking them back to shore.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were all very, very thankful and happy … No one was hurt that I\u2019m aware of. Everybody is off.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wright said he had been told by a passenger that the vessel may have struck something underwater.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we suspect he\u2019s gone into a cathedral or one of the things that they look at \u2026 I think she said they went in to look at some seals, and he must have connected with a reef or a rock.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the vessel was badly compromised by the time they arrived.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs we came on board, the boat had taken on water and was clearly missing. So now it\u2019s one to three-quarters sunk.\u201d<\/p>\n
The boat has capsized off the coast of Akaroa. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
Passenger Chris Friedman said the boat was on its return journey around midday, about 45 minutes from shore, when something went wrong.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were making their return at midday, around 45 minutes from shore, when all of a sudden the boat jolted, and they heard a \u2018thud\u2019,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did not know what was going on \u2026 people were not panicking but were certainly all a bit scared.\u201d<\/p>\n
Friedman said that five to 10 minutes later, passengers noticed the smell of fuel and were instructed to put on life jackets. <\/p>\n
He said there was no explanation from the crew about what had happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then we started to take on water.\u201d<\/p>\n
The vessel was subsequently evacuated using smaller lifeboats, with passengers taken ashore in groups.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe boat was fully evacuated by smaller lifeboats in groups, all making it back to shore at around 1pm,\u201d Friedman said.<\/p>\n
Black Cat Cruises has been approached for comment, along with Maritime NZ and NZ Police. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cLooked like it was on fire or there was oil pouring out of the engine and creating that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260311,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[11730,67916,7022,5532,58461,127406,8688,2037,6183,40488,1549,111,43,139,69,1118,6662,29459,42371,1961,17489],"class_list":["post-260310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-afternoon","tag-akaroa","tag-black","tag-boat","tag-capsized","tag-capsizes","tag-cat","tag-cruise","tag-dozens","tag-evacuated","tag-evacuation","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-off","tag-passengers","tag-prompting","tag-this","tag-tourist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260310","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=260310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}