Man Overboard
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In early January 2024, Will Fransen, a keen 61-year old diver and game angler, left from Tairua on New Zealand’s Coromandel Peninsula aboard his 40-foot boat ‘Betty G’. His plan was to fish for marlin, solo, in the Western Bay of Plenty waters. He planned an overnight trip, staying the night at the Mercury Islands, and filed the details of his plans with the Coastguard.
His plans quickly went off course. This is his story, as told to Fishing in Godzone magazine (NZ).
The conditions were calm and sunny and Fransen was trolling lures with five lines out. His luck was in, when south of the Aldermen Islands the 24kg rig in the short corner ‘went off’. Although he was fishing single-handed, Fransen managed to clear the other four rigs.
There was no jumping from the fish, so Will thought it may be a tuna. He was already wearing his [Black Magic] Equalizer® harness and gimbal set when the fish struck, but not a lifejacket or a PLB (Personal Locator Beacon). He got the fish to the boat before he realised it was a marlin, albeit a fairly docile one.
“It was an average-sized stripy” he said, “and it was the first day of my holiday, so I tagged it. I had my wiring gloves on, put the rod in a holder and had the engine in neutral while I tried to unhook the fish, but it kept swimming under the boat. The ‘Betty G’ has a slow-revving Gardner diesel engine, so I put the engine in gear at idle with the autopilot on to bring the fish out from under the hull."
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“’Betty G’ has a fishing platform at the stern, behind the transom wall, with safety rails, and I felt secure there. I reached under the starboard side rail (which is removable) so I could unhook the fish. The fish shook its head - the only time it did during the fight - and I think this pulled me off balance and I must have lifted the rail out right out of its mounts.”
Will overbalanced and toppled into the water. The rail came with him and was lost overboard.
“It was all so quick, I’m not entirely sure how it happened,” he said.
He had set up a GoPro camera to film proceedings and had later hoped he might have footage of exactly what went wrong, but unfortunately this camera was one of the items lost when looters stripped the boat after it later ran aground.
Calm conditions and the 20-degree water temperature were two of several factors that helped Will survive. As mentioned, he wasn’t wearing a lifejacket or PLB but was dressed in a t-shirt, gloves, jandals, his wiring gloves and his broad-brimmed hat, which had come off his head but caught on his foot. He grabbed it and jammed it back on, later crediting it with saving him from sunstroke, as he sports a shaved head.
As soon as he hit the water, Will tried to swim after the ‘Betty G’ but even with the boat idling ahead at only three knots, he very quickly found that he couldn’t catch her.
There was only one line in the water – the one with the marlin on – and Fransen managed to get hold of it. The marlin was still hooked - he could feel it pulling - and the whole load of 24kg line (about 800m) slowly pulled off against the drag until it got to the spool knot. Because of the pressure on the line Will could not get a wrap on the line but slowly pulled himself back towards the boat - until the line slipped from his hands, and he had to watch his beloved ‘Betty G’ slowly travel away, leaving him treading water, alone in the ocean.
“I thought I was toast,” he said.
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In fact, Fransen was not entirely alone in the water. He was visited by a two-metre shark which, worryingly, circled him a couple of times before heading away. He did not know what species it was, only that it had a nick in its dorsal fin.
“After that, every time I touched a bit of weed or debris, I nearly **** myself” he said.
The Aldermen Islands were about three miles away and Will realised that he had to try and do something to save himself. The other item that he had taken over the side with him was his [Black Magic] Equalizer® harness and gimbal. Although this is certainly not designed for, or intended as, lifesaving equipment, it proved critical in helping keep Fransen afloat. The harness incorporates closed-cell foam as internal padding, and the rod bucket is hollow plastic with foam padding on the outside.
“I slid the harness up under my armpits and held the gimbal on my chest while swimming on my back and kicking with my feet, the same way I would travel back to the boat on the surface when diving.
“At first, I seemed to be making progress towards the islands, then the current changed, and I was going in the other direction. About then I gave up swimming, opting to try and save my energy.
“Later in the afternoon I could see game fishing boats heading back to Tairua. One came close to me, still trolling, and I tried to attract their attention by waving and yelling, but they didn’t see me, and I guess they couldn’t hear me over the engine noise. That night I laid a plan to try and signal with the lens of my wristwatch.”
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“Over the next 20 hours or so I concentrated on staying afloat. The Equalizer gimbals are not designed to be watertight and from time-to-time I had to hold the rod bucket over my head to drain out the water that slowly leaked into it. It and the harness were the only things that were keeping me afloat. That harness and gimbal saved my life,” said Fransen later.
After shivering his way through the night, reflecting on his life and his loved ones, Fransen doubted he would make it through another night. Saltwater sometimes entered his nose and mouth, and his teeth were chattering.
By the middle of the next day Will was sunburned and hallucinating. He thought he was seeing boats where there were none. Sea conditions had roughened. Then another chance – a big Riviera passed him and although he tried to signal them with his watch lens, he reckons he couldn’t get his arm high enough above the waves to catch the sun.
By around mid-afternoon the sea had settled again, and Will’s luck finally came right. Max White, James McDonnell, and Tyler Taffs were out trolling in their 6.1 metre McLay boat ‘All Knight.’ James and Tyler are cousins and were staying with family at Whangamata.
Will Fransen said “Their boat was as close as the boat that passed me on the first day and the sun was behind them at just the right angle to catch my watch lens. When I signalled with it, they saw it straight away and came right over. Someone reached out with a boathook, I think, and I managed to climb up their boarding ladder before I collapsed in the bottom of their boat. It was an unreal moment. They are great guys, and I owe them a lot.
”Despite the relatively warm water, after twenty-three and-a-half hours in the water Fransen was borderline hyperthermic. His rescuers got him into some dry clothing, then wrapped him in an insulated fish bag.
As they removed his harness and gimbal someone asked: “So, did you catch anything?”
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Will’s rescuers gave him fluids - water and juice - and whisked him to Whangamata (a journey that took an hour-and-a-half at best speed), where he was met by an ambulance. Ashore, the paramedics thought Fransen was in decent shape for a man who had been in the water for nearly 24 hours and had drifted somewhere between 30 and 50 nautical miles. He had a decent dose of sunburn and aching muscles from treading water but recovered quickly and after a check-up at Thames Hospital, was released.
What happened to the Betty G?
Fransen’s 40-foot (12m) boat, ‘Betty G’, is a veteran, built in Tairua. Will is keen on game fishing and diving, and bought her four years ago, fitting her up for these pursuits. He loves his boat and uses it all the time, catching two marlin from her so far.
After Will went over the side and the boat idled off over the horizon, she travelled for nine-and-a-half days at idle before running out of fuel. The autopilot may have malfunctioned at some stage but unfortunately as the batteries ran down, the GPS lost the recordings of her tracks, so her whereabouts in later days are a bit of a mystery. Despite searches, it was about two weeks later that the phone (and social media) went ballistic with the news that the ‘Betty G’ had come ashore near the Raukokore Rivermouth, southwest of Waihau Bay on the eastern side of the Bay of Plenty.
By good fortune, the boat had grounded in about the middle of a three-kilometre gravel beach, missing all the surrounding rocky reefs and points.
“Gear had been thrown around when she came ashore, the bottom paint was scratched and the prop had been a bit polished up, but she was sound and not leaking,” reported Will.
He and his son Rhys quickly organised a salvage crew from Tairua and a tow boat from Tauranga, getting to the scene of the grounding the next morning.
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“The local people were wonderful and gave us a lot of help,” said Will, “I can’t thank them enough.”
Unfortunately, thieves had struck too and stripped the ‘Betty G’ of many valuable items, including dinghy, outboard, cameras, fishing tackle, dive gear and personal items. None of this equipment had been recovered at the time of writing.
With ropes around the keel, the ‘Betty G’ was pulled off the beach and towed back to port.
“I’m just grateful to have my boat back” said Fransen.
“She was on the hard in Tauranga for a bit, for some repairs to the paintwork and transducer. The lost side-rail has been replaced and it, and its mate, are now held in place with locking pins so they cannot be accidently lifted out of their mounts. She is back in the water and has been on several fishing and diving trips since.”
The most important thing that Will says he has learned from the whole experience came out after later discussions with Coastguard. As mentioned, Will had filed a trip report, but there was no alarm raised when he did not close it off at the end of the day.
Apparently, with the exception of bar crossings (which are promptly followed up on), while Coastguard record the details of general trip reports called in to them, very few skippers seem to remember to close them off at the end of the day. Coastguard doesn’t have the resources to chase up everyone who has filed a trip report, so it is critical for skippers to also leave details of their plans with friends or family who need to report anyone who is overdue and raise the alarm if necessary.
And for those who don’t believe in karma, at that time of the rescue, the ‘All Knight’ crew had never caught a marlin, but once they had caught a human their luck changed, according to Will.
Since their good deed they have caught both a marlin and a swordfish.
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