"Beacon Hill. Beacon Hill. Come in. Mayday."
It's just after 10pm on a Monday at the end of August when those words cut through the static on Wellington harbour radio.
"We're f****** getting swamped out here. We've lost fuel tanks please advise."
The transcript was released to RNZ by the Harbourmaster's office.
Mayday calls are uncommon at the best of times. To hear one on the harbour's working channel is rarer still. The operator responds without hesitation.
"Mayday. Wellington Harbour Radio. Who is calling? Who is calling? Please identify yourself and your position. Over."
Twelve long seconds of silence follow.
The operator tries once more.
"...Mayday, channel one-four. What is your position? What is the name of your vessel? Over."
The reply comes back mangled by static, but a location is there: three nautical miles from Karori Rock.
That puts the small boat somewhere in the notoriously unforgiving stretch of Cook Strait off Wellington's south coast.
"We're being swamped ... I've lost the bungs to the back of our boat. We're swamped."
The operator asks for the vessel's name three more times. Each response is inaudible, broken by long gaps.
Across the entire exchange, they ask for the boat's identity eight times. They never get an answer.
"... we're taking on water, we're swamped ..."
How many people on board?
Two.
Then silence.
Those on the stricken vessel are told to switch to channel 16, the international distress frequency, and are informed that Maritime radio will be their primary contact from this point. Police have been notified.
Away from the radio, an urgent search and rescue operation gets under way.
The boat is never heard from again. More than three months later, the question still stands: did it ever exist?
Mayday response 'exceedingly good'
The mayday, transmitted on 25 August, set off a frantic response.
Police, Coastguard, and the airport's fire service converged on the waters near Karori Rock, an offshore lighthouse sitting on Wellington's remote southwest coast. Commercial vessels, among them an Interislander ferry, joined the hunt, working through Cook Strait for several hours.
Nothing surfaced. No debris, no water containers, no chilly-bins drifting on the swell.
Nobody was reported missing. Checks of boating ramps along the shoreline turned up no unattended trailers.
The following afternoon, the search was called off.
Police, who led the overall response, declined to be interviewed but confirmed that their investigation into the mayday has since been closed.
Those who know the call tend to reach for the same two words: odd, and unusual.
Wellington harbourmaster Grant Nalder says it carried "all the elements" of a genuine distress situation, yet something felt off, not least because the call came directly to the harbour's signal station on channel 14.
"The usual for a mayday is [that] you don't call anyone specific, it's just 'mayday' — that's the trigger word on channel 16."
Channel 16 is the internationally recognised frequency for distress and communication, he explains, and any mayday broadcast on it is automatically picked up by the national Maritime radio network.
Listening back to a recording of the call months later, Nalder thinks he can make out two distinct voices on the line.
He is clear, though, that based on what was reported to him, using the word 'mayday' was entirely justified.
"That's the one that's used if there's imminent danger to life. Three miles southwest of Karori Rock's known for its tide and rough waters.
"If a boat had been ... anchored in Oriental Bay and taking on water, it's not good but it's probably a swim ashore. Cook Strait, that's very different."
Maydays are mercifully infrequent, and Nalder says the response to this one was "exceedingly good".
"Our operator kept asking them questions, they confirmed the location ... which is really important. You can't do a search if you don't know where you're going."
Those details, he says, reached police and the national search and rescue headquarters quickly, and from there the operation gathered pace.
Calling all ships
Maritime NZ's Rescue Coordination Centre, known as RCCNZ, operates out of Avalon Studios, a ten-storey tower block in Lower Hutt that sits at odds with its surroundings. The centre runs around the clock: Maritime radio operators work against a backdrop of random static bursts and broadcasts, their dials locked to channel 16. Further down the hall, search and rescue officers rotate through twelve-hour shifts in front of screens flickering with real-time weather and vessel tracking data.
According to RCCNZ operations manager Michael Clulow, the team covers one of the largest search and rescue regions on the planet, ranking in the top five or six for size, and stretching from the South Pole north to Tokelau, near the equator.
Across that roughly 30 million square kilometres, RCCNZ can draw on whatever resources it judges necessary to save a life, from the local surf lifesaving club right through to the defence force.
Last year the team handled around 1500 distress calls. Of those, between 50 and 100 each year are maydays, Clulow says.
A distress call of that nature can trigger an all-ships broadcast, a directive requiring any vessel in the area to drop everything and render assistance.
After the 25 August mayday in Wellington, police requested exactly that from Maritime radio.
Search yields nothing
Around the same time, the police vessel Lady Elizabeth IV and the airport fire service launched, joined by two boatloads of Coastguard volunteers pushing into the choppy waters of the Karori rip.
Maritime's broadcast had pulled in both recreational and commercial vessels in the area, each directed to police for instructions.
The Interislander ferry Kaiārahi was first to arrive on scene.
At the time, ferry passenger Tupoki Wairau-Hunter told RNZ the ship slowed as it approached Wellington, with those on board encouraged to join the search beneath a large spotlight sweeping the water.
The effort continued through to the early hours of Tuesday morning.
A police statement issued a few hours later confirmed no debris had been recovered and nothing had appeared during checks of the shoreline and boat ramps.
Police said they "urgently wanted to hear from anyone with information directly related" to the distress call.
Throughout the search, Maritime's radio operators maintained a continuous watch on channel 16. Clulow says they heard nothing more from the vessel.
By Tuesday afternoon, police repeated their call for information and formally suspended the search.
Origins of call remain a mystery
Was it a hoax? Put directly to both Nalder and Clulow, neither will commit.
"We don't actually know what the case was with this," Nalder says, though he notes that nothing has emerged to suggest a boat was actually lost at sea.
There is a possibility, he concedes, that whatever went wrong resolved itself, though he acknowledges that seems unlikely.
"There's a lot of people that put up a lot of time for this — it's not something to be done lightly. But by the same token, we don't want people to be afraid to call for help if they need to."
Clulow accepts a hoax is possible, but stresses that such calls are extraordinarily rare and typically do not carry a significant cost. A bigger headache, he says, are unregistered personal locator beacons that trigger accidentally.
In more than three years at RCCNZ, Clulow has encountered only two fake calls.
"In that same time, we've done 4500 search and rescue incidents. Going and responding to something that isn't an emergency is a bit of a waste of resource," he says, and "it's obviously frustrating.
"But it happens really infrequently."
On the question of cost, the vessels involved absorb it. That is simply the framework that keeps mariners safe, he says.
A KiwiRail spokesperson confirmed that the distress call pushed back Kaiārahi's next sailing by roughly 90 minutes, with any additional cost taken on as part of its "commitment to maritime safety".
"Under international maritime law, seafarers have a duty to render assistance to those in distress at sea. We take that responsibility seriously and our crews are trained to assist in emergencies."
A police spokesperson confirmed to RNZ that the investigation is over.
"With no persons reported missing or coming forward, we are unable to clarify the origins of the radio message."
Should the call prove to be a hoax and those responsible be identified, any charges would still have to satisfy the Solicitor-General's guidelines for prosecution.
As for whether Clulow is at peace with the idea that nobody has been left out there at sea?
"I certainly hope not. We'd move heaven and earth to help those in distress and we throw a lot of resource at it because obviously, it's the safety of our friends and whānau.
"We'll always respond to people in need."
How to stay safe on the water
Clulow's baseline recommendation is to carry two reliable forms of communication, including a beacon such as an EPIRB, an Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon.
If a phone is available, Nalder's advice is straightforward: call 111 directly. "Don't call your mate, don't try and find the Coastguard number."
Saying 'mayday' on channel 16 is the obvious step in a life-threatening emergency, he adds, but the channel can also be used to flag less urgent problems to Maritime radio, such as a flat battery or loss of fuel requiring a tow.
Beyond communication, the basics matter: check the forecast, plan the trip, and do not hesitate to ask for help early. A minor problem can spiral from a simple tow into a full search and rescue operation, particularly once darkness falls.
"So, if you're having difficulties, tell someone."
