Help us to Purchase a New Winch

We have been advised by the manufacturers of our current winch that as of August 2015 they will cease to service, overhaul or replace our aging winch. This leaves us in a position of major dilemma if there are any issues with our rescue winch as we would no longer be able to help people that were in need of being winched from dangerous, life threatening situations.

We are now in a situation where we have to purchase a new winch to ensure we are winch capable in the community, at all times. The new winch would see us not only future proof ourselves by having the latest technology, highest safety features and ongoing maintenance overhaul options for many years, but also make our EMS/ Rescue service leaders in New Zealand winching operations (given our geographical surroundings, our service has one of the highest winching records throughout the country). The calendar timing between overhauls for the new winch is 10 years as opposed to most rescue winches which is five years.

The safety features and speed of deploying and retrieving the winch cable have ongoing benefits as this reduces time spent hovering, positioning of the aircraft and the time spent with a human load on the wire. Those reductions are critical when conducting marine, water or sinking boat scenario winching and can often mean the difference between a snappy efficient retrieval versus something quite disastrous.

The majority of our winching operations are generally to remote areas where trampers or outdoor types require our service. We also attend an increasing number of forestry accidents whereby the terrain dictates that the only option available is winch retrieval. In these types of missions we need to know that our gear (including the winch) is of the highest operational standard and in a serviceable condition in order to complete our task. The new winch will also allow us an extra 30m of useable cable length compared to the current winch, which will allow better access to steep and high terrain or heavily forested areas.

Current pricing for the Breeze Eastern Winch is US$143,975, allowing for exchange rate fluctuations this is approximately NZD$215,000. There are also additional costs of fitting, aircraft modifications, certification and crew training as required to complete NZCAA documents which would bring this figure to $265,000.

This is a small investment of $26,500 per year for 10 years before it will need to be overhauled and will save many lives in the community throughout this 10 year period.