The owner of this Riviera sedan launch (no name visible) scared the living daylights out of me on Sunday. I was more scared than anything I've felt in 30+ years of mucking round on, in and under the sea.

We were anchored fishing 65m to the west of South Island (small clump of rocks by Rakino).  The anchor was a lot closer to the island. 

I saw a large bow wave heading directly toward us from the south and it was not slowing down! Kept an eye on it to see if it was going to change course or slow down at all and it got to the point where I dropped my rod on the deck (with an under-sized snapper) and RAN to the helm thinking I was going to need to take evasive action. The only option I had was to fire the engines up, go hard astern and let anchor rode out at the same time.

Luckily just as I had my hand on the keys and was dropping anchor rode he slowed down and turned to starboard so that he passed between my bow and the island. I jumped up, poked my head out the hatch and shouted at him to slow down further (along with hand gestures).

We happened upon the boat again (45 minutes later) in Woody Bay, Rakino so I pulled alongside for a chat. No swearing or abuse on my part - just strongly telling him what he did wrong (pointing out all the maritime rules he broke). Strangely his wife/partner said I was ruining their day with friends and that I should go have a nice day elsewhere.  Don't think she appreciated it when I pointed out that I HAD been having a very nice day until they had scared me more more than I've ever been scared on the ocean before.

The phone screenshot shows approx where I was anchored. He came from the south and passed just to the east of the red porthand marker before going between me and the little island.

We make people have a license to drive on the roads and look how well that has worked in reducing stupid behavior and accidents, and that is actively patrolled by the police.

Yeah, I thought about that Keith. The Riviera has no name, no AIS etc. so there's really no way of identifying who the owner is.

The only thing I have is the picture I posted above and it's my word against his.  (If anyone can identify the model of Riviera I would be interested).

https://rmarine.nz/preowned/riviera-6000-sport-yacht-8/" rel="nofollow - https://rmarine.nz/preowned/riviera-6000-sport-yacht-8/

The reality is that there are only a handful of Harbour Master boats around so there's close to zero enforcement.  

The only thing it's missing is a collision avoidance system

Yep, it's cheap for what you may need at some stage.

On Friday we got paged to go find a 17 ft boat with mechanical issues and tow them back to the Gulf Harbour ramp. Total time from being paged to having the vessel back at the ramp was 3 hours at least.  We had to go find them as they were being blown fairly quickly north of Tiri and then the tow back was limited to around 7 knots because of the sea state. They were not members and had agreed to pay the $280 per hour fee.