The helicopter heroes who risked their lives to save five fishermen fought back tears as they reunited with the Enchanter's survivors, and say it's "pretty rare" to have people return to say thank you.
Five Waikato men died and five others survived the March 20 tragedy off North Cape when the Enchanter charter boat capsized.
Now the survivors have paid tribute to the men who saved their lives in Newshub Investigates: The Enchanter Tragedy which aired on Three and ThreeNow on Wednesday.
"Those guys at Northern Rescue Helicopters are amazing. We wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for them," said Jayde Cook from Putaruru, who is among the survivors speaking out for the first time.
"What they did to get us out of the water and to find the other guys eventually was amazing. I owe them everything," Ben Stinson, another survivor, added.
Five other men - Geoff Allen, 72, his son-in-law Mark "Skid" Walker, Richard Bright ,63, Mike Lovett, 72, and Mark "Sando" Sanders, 43, all died after the 16.5-metre Enchanter was hit by a rogue wave on the return journey from Manawatāwhi / Three Kings Islands.
Enchanter's skipper Lance Goodhew, one of the five rescued, is under investigation by Maritime New Zealand and the Transport Accident Investigation Commission.
Newshub was there as some of the survivors, including the Enchanter's deckhand Kobe O'Neill went to Whangarei to thank the Northern Rescue Helicopter crew who saved them.
They say they are "indebted" to pilot Lance Donnelly, co-pilot Alex Hunt, winch operator Paul Davis and rescue swimmer Josh Raravula.
Donnelly, visibly touched by the reunion, said: "It's really special, we don't see people we rescue very often, so yeah it's really good to have them visit."
The 10 men were on the "big game fishing trip of a lifetime" with Enchanter Fishing, when Goodhew's charter boat hit trouble 20 minutes from where they were due to drop anchor for the night.
The skipper has declined to comment while under investigation by Maritime New Zealand for taking clients out during a severe weather warning.
Stinson said the weather wasn't bad at the time the rogue wave hit.
"We were not rushing home because of any bad weather… 20 knots it was pretty comfy," he said.
Shay Ward, the only witness, was on the back deck when "the wave came in from the side. It's not something you see way out in the distance coming, it's just something that got big right then and there. There's no time to yell out."
The chaos that ensued "decapitated the Enchanter's flybridge", he said.
"I broke the surface.. the boat was upside down, the props are spinning, there's black smoke everywhere, diesel in the water and debris absolutely everywhere," recalled Ward.
O'Neill said he remembers opening his eyes and just seeing bubbles, "not big bubbles, little bubbles … like I seen the light flash before my eyes and thought f**k I'm gonna die".
Nine men in all popped up, unable to communicate with roaring engines that "sounded like an airplane under the water."
Mark Walker, the trip planner, wasn't so lucky - he was trapped in his bed.
'Small miracle on the crest of a wave'
Half an hour after "the freak wave" an EPIRB washed up on the flybridge where O'Neill, Stinson and Goodhew had climbed to safety - they set it off as their friends drifted off amidst the debris.
Documents obtained by Newshub from Maritime New Zealand under the Official Information Act show the Rescue Coordination Centre got the alert at 8:18pm.
The helicopter was tasked within 21 minutes but didn't take off until 10:05pm from Whangarei. A storm battering Northland and Auckland was a concern for all rescuers including the local Coastguard which deemed it "too unsafe to respond".
A P3 Orion, Auckland's Westpac Rescue Helicopter, and three commercial vessels were also hampered by the wall of weather between them and the remote scene off North Cape.
Ward and Cook, who'd watched the others drift away, made it onto the upturned hull where it was hard to hold on during the night in the swells.
"You'd be dry for a couple of minutes and you'd see one and say, 'Hang on mate, hang on'... It was the times you didn't see them coming when you were looking for a helicopter that a wave would get us out of the blue. Like 44 gallon drums being dumped on you."
But at 11:41pm the Northern Rescue helicopter crew was overhead.
"It was relief, almost disbelief at what we had just been through and survived," remembers Ward - who said the rescue was "certainly not like the American movies where you get Ashton Kutcher jump out of a helicopter in a basket - it's literally a person swimming in the water on a wire rope".
The survivors joked about this during their reunion with the Whangarei-based helicopter crew during the filming of the one-hour Enchanter Tragedy Special.
Maritime NZ has revealed fuel shortages in the Far North and a five hour delay to get fuel driven up from Kerikeri to top up waiting helicopters have emerged as issues in a multi-agency debrief.
"We feel like we did everything we could with the time and the fuel we had, obviously we wish we could have gone back, had more time in the area, found more people," said rescue swimmer Josh Raravula.
The survivors say they owe their lives to those "everyday Kiwi blokes being heroes" at Northern Rescue Helicopters.
They're now launching a fundraising campaign to buy ballistics helmets, priced at $5000 each, for the Whangarei-based helicopter crew.
To donate click here.
