Sometimes you have to wonder about people. I doubt anyone will remember, but way back in March, I mentioned this total [noun] of a person who did a hoax distress call, as a result of which I was out until about 4 a.m. in *really* bad weather looking for four people who were supposedly drowning after their boat supposedly sunk. On that occasion, it was not only us who were out there, but a helicopter with operating costs of several hundred dollars an hour; a large private vessel which volunteered to assist at some considerable risk to themselves; and a deep sea fishing vessel which diverted its course to do the same. Apart from anything else, when the control room decides it's time to give up looking, you go home feeling like you've killed those four people yourself. You think how they might have been *right there* and you weren't looking in the right direction, or your concentration slacked off for two seconds at exactly the wrong time, or you were talking to somebody on the boat exactly when they were nearby so you missed them. I can't describe what it feels like, the next day, to find out it was a hoax somebody did just to amuse themselves.

Anyway. The same person just did it AGAIN.

This time it was in daylight and calm weather, but in the same area, and a very similar call. All the calls to Coastguard are taped, of course, so the police are now comparing them and it's definitely the same person. Some of the people who were on scene to respond to this recent incident were also present for the March one, and they recognised the voice and style of the call.

What makes it worse is that it seems that this *person* (for want of a better word) is a boatie himself. It seems he sends out the distress call, then pretends to have picked it up himself, and relays it in. It seems he then up-anchors and motors out to spend an enjoyable day watching every boat within ten kilometres rush to the scene and spend hours looking for non-existent people in a non-existent boat who are drowning. It seems he doesn't much care that, on one of the busiest boating weekends of the year, he just diverted half the rescue resources in the Hauraki Gulf to have a bit of a laugh, putting lives in danger if there had been a *genuine* emergency elsewhere which nobody could reach in time.

There isn't really any point to this post, except that some people are a bunch of [censored], [censored], [censored]ing [censored]s and I don't like them.