The Tasman Bay unit took three of the seven national titles at Coastguard Tautiaki Moana’s Volunteer Excellence Awards in Auckland on Saturday night.
Coastguard Nelson won Unit of the Year at Coastguard Tautiaki Moana’s 2026 Volunteer Excellence Awards. Its bosun, Geoff Eban, was named Crew Member of the Year, and unit president Annette Nistor received the Outstanding Leadership Award.
Coastguard received 74 nominations across seven categories, two more than in 2025, according to its announcement of the winners. It also introduced a hand-carved taonga as the awards’ new centrepiece. Nelson picked up a regional award too, with Crystal Gaiger named a regional winner for Unit Support Volunteer of the Year.
Nelson’s rescue record
Coastguard Nelson’s area runs from the top of Farewell Spit to the northern tip of D’Urville Island, with Tasman Bay in between. Coastguard describes it as the largest area of water covered by any one unit.
According to the Unit of the Year citation, the unit responded to 74 requests for assistance and 58 operational incidents during the nomination period. Its crews saved seven lives across three complex rescues and assisted a further 126 people over more than 870 volunteer hours at sea.
One of those rescues involved a fishing vessel grounding in French Pass. When the unit was called to French Pass last December, Hohapata Sealord Rescue spent 12 hours on an overnight job. Her crew worked against the pass’s strong tidal stream to recover the fishing boat’s crew from the shoreline, then towed the vessel to Croisilles Harbour. The Transport Accident Investigation Commission has an inquiry open into that grounding, of the fishing vessel Taudre.
The award also recognises the unit’s training, finances and volunteer development. Coastguard lists 90 training sessions totalling 1,725 volunteer hours. The unit introduced a digital communications platform and more than doubled its capital reserve to roughly $290,000. Its membership is younger, and closer to 30 per cent female, than it has ever been. Nelson Police Search and Rescue rates the unit an outstanding SAR partner, and the Mayor of Nelson recognised it publicly during National Volunteer Week.
Coastguard Nelson was also Unit of the Year in 2021, the year Hohapata Sealord Rescue arrived after three and a half years of work, according to Coastguard’s 2021 awards release. Last year it won Community Engagement Unit of the Year, and Peter Herrick was named Operational Crew Member of the Year. The unit dates from 1975 and celebrated its 50th anniversary last year.
Geoff Eban’s work aboard and ashore
Eban joined Coastguard Nelson in 2017. His nomination lists his roles as bosun, senior crew member and relief duty officer, along with places on the unit’s incident management team and management committee. He introduced TimeZero search-planning software to the unit.
He also project-managed the build of Hohapata Sealord Rescue through to her commissioning in 2021, and has since given more than 200 volunteer hours a year to maintaining and upgrading her. The vessel is a Naiad design built by Aimex in Nelson. Baird Maritime’s vessel review puts her cost at NZ$1.4 million, raised entirely through private donations. Eban was also Coastguard’s Support Volunteer of the Year in 2022, as Powerboat Magazine reported at the time.
The nomination points to the grounding of the 52-foot ketch Vaila in Te Pukatea Bay, in the Abel Tasman. Working from shore, Eban analysed the situation and made recommendations that helped the yacht refloat safely before she was towed back to Adele Island. Colleagues praised his technical knowledge and his support for newer volunteers.
Skipper and president
Nistor completed her operational qualifications while serving as unit president. Her citation tracks her from Qualified Crew in 2020 to Senior Crew in 2023 and Master this year. Her first deployment as skipper came with a 1am tasking to a critically ill patient aboard a commercial fishing vessel off D’Urville Island, and she led her crew through a five-hour medical evacuation.
In May, Nelson news site Top South Now reported that she had become the unit’s only female qualified skipper. The previous woman to qualify as a master there did so in 2004. “It’s about good seamanship and leadership on the water,” she told the site.
As president she has backed Suddenly in Charge, the Coastguard workshops that build the skills and confidence of crew who could find themselves suddenly in charge on the water. She has also backed Project Tora, which is looking at faster, more localised rescue capability for remote Golden Bay communities.
Her nomination includes a comment from Peter Kara, a former Coastguard Nelson president and now a member of the Water Safety Council: “under her leadership style our unit has grown its younger volunteers including our female volunteers.” Kara won the same Outstanding Leadership Award in 2021. Coastguard credited him then with turning the unit around from a low point a decade earlier, when it had few volunteers and limited equipment.
The other national winners
Coastguard Wellington took Rescue of the Year for the night of 20 May. The Spirit of Wellington crew carried out a vessel-to-vessel transfer in darkness and gale-force winds near Cape Palliser to evacuate a sailor suffering seizures. Our report at the time covers that evacuation from the yacht Boxing Kangaroo and the separate rescue of her skipper by HMNZS Taupō the following night.
Brigid Green of Coastguard Raglan is Unit Support Volunteer of the Year after two decades as the unit’s secretary and then treasurer. In that time Raglan has banked $700,000 towards a new rescue vessel. Zane Smith of Coastguard West Coast was named Emerging Volunteer of the Year for helping rebuild a unit that had no operational rescue assets when he joined in February 2025. By March this year, six of the volunteers he recruited had qualified as Rescue Watercraft Masters. Coastguard Auckland won Community Engagement Unit of the Year after 44 events that reached about 3,500 people.
Coastguard also named 14 regional winners across the seven categories.
Learn more at https://www.coastguard.nz/our-story/news-and-media/meet-the-volunteers-coastguard-tautiaki-moana-is-celebrating-this-year
