Yacht destroyed in blaze

At 1715 on Wednesday, June 10, Marine Rescue Cottage Point was alerted to a vessel on fire in Yeoman’s Bay in Ku-Ring-Gai National Park, and tasked to assist the Rural Fire Service (notified at half an hour earlier) and Ambulance Service at the scene. Yeoman’s Bay is a narrow waterway about one nautical mile from Cottage Point and is accessible only by water.

Within 25 minutes, Marine Rescue skipper John Bensley and crew member Chris Jones were at the Marine Rescue Cottage Point base and liaising with emergency services. They deployed Cottage Point 30, a 30' Sailfish Catamaran to ferry RFS and ambulance crews to the nearby scene and assisted the RFS fire crews (eventually seven brigades in all) and Police in fighting the fire on the vessel. 

The burning vessel was a 48' luxury pilothouse Buizen yacht, Telezia, and its fibreglass hull was still alight on the arrival. Fortunately the skipper and his friends were on their way back to the boat in the tender when the fire took hold. The crew was checked by Ambulance Paramedics at the Marine Rescue Cottage Point base. All were uninjured.

Despite the desperate efforts of the four RFS Fire Boats, the Water Police and crew from Cottage Point 30, the damage caused by the fire caused the yacht to sink on its mooring. This posed a significant environmental pollution hazard in the National Park as the vessel had over 300 litres of diesel and unleaded fuel onboard.  To minimise the hazard, the Marine Rescue Cottage Point crew assisted the Fire and Emergency HAZMAT team in rigging a floating boom around the sunken yacht. 

Through the close liaison between RFS, Ambulance, Water Police and Marine Rescue the incident was managed to the best of the agencies’ capabilities with minimum impact to the environment. There will be a Police investigation into the cause of the fire.

Photos courtesy of Marine Area Command, Channel 10 and NSW Fire Brigade.