Retired truck driver’s life savings sunk with fishing boat after grounding on Farewell Spit

A retired truck driver who sank his life savings into a fishing boat, hoping to secure a family legacy, has now lost everything after the vessel ran aground and sank – while the skipper hired to run it was asleep.

Eddie Lockington is now bankrupt at age 74, with only a car to his name – and he had to refinance that – after his boat, the Scorpio, was left in pieces from the events of two years ago and the insurance company refused to pay out.

The boat was eventually cut up by the local council, which salvaged it, and skipper Simon Dunjey has now been sentenced to community work for operating a ship in a manner causing unnecessary danger or risk and operating a ship without the right number of crew.

Lockington sold his house in Greymouth to buy the $35,000 boat in 2019, and had planned to go fishing after retiring from a life on the road, but then got cancer so decided to hire a crew to run the boat.

No one was reliable until March 2022 when he met Dunjey, who “turned up, produced his ticket and agreed to start immediately”, the Nelson District Court heard last week.

“I’m so disappointed. Dad trusted Simon,” his daughter Charmaine Lockington said in a victim impact statement read in court on their behalf.

The pair looked on via video link from Greymouth, shaking their heads as Dunjey was sentenced on the two Maritime NZ charges.

Dunjey, who admitted he was “financially f****d”, had no means to pay either a fine or reparation, and was instead given 250 hours of community work.

The beneficiary, who has Inland Revenue debts of nearly $23,000, plus a loan of $7000 and $9000 in outstanding fines, avoided a further fine of almost $5000 because he had no means to pay it.

“It’s apparent you have nothing, or less than nothing, and I have to be realistic in accepting that an order for reparation would cause undue hardship”, Judge Garry Barkle said while acknowledging the devastating impact this would have on the Lockingtons.

“It’s been an unexpected and life-changing situation and their distress is apparent on the screen.”

Charmaine Lockington told NZME she had no more tears left to cry: “Seeing the pictures of the broken boat . . . I’ve cried so many tears over this.”

Her father, who now rents the house he sold to buy the boat, survives on his pension and the support from Charmaine and a second daughter, Kleah Boyd, who had each moved to the Coast to care for him.

“I now live very frugally and if not for my daughters, I don’t know how I would survive,” Eddie Lockington said.

“I have nothing left, thanks to Simon’s stupidity.”

Scorpio, a 10.2m wooden-hulled vessel built in 1965, was Lockington’s pride and was meant to be a legacy to his family, as their foray into the fishing industry.

Its home-port was Greymouth, but Scorpio’s last trip was out of Nelson in April 2022, where Dunjey had ended up after a “joy ride” when he was meant to have been fishing off the West Coast.

Dunjey left Greymouth on what was meant to have been a fishing trip on April 8 but ended up in Nelson.

“There was no need for him to go to Nelson,” said Lockington.

“He left Greymouth to go fishing – in between Jackson Bay and Karamea, which gave him an unloading option in Greymouth, Jackson Bay and Westport,” he told NZME.

“I was paying berthage in Greymouth, but the next thing he ended up in Nelson.”

Defence lawyer Luke Acland told the court there was a factual dispute over Dunjey being in the Nelson area, and that the insurance schedule claimed the vessel was moored there.

Acland told the court the insurance company’s decision not to pay was because of the risks associated with events leading up to the loss of the boat.

Lockington told NZME that after he learned the boat was in Nelson he’d told Dunjey to leave it there and that he and a mate would take it back to Greymouth.

However, the defence proposed that Lockington had told Dunjey to get back to Greymouth and that there was some resistance by him because he knew he should not have left port without another on board.

The Grounding

Dunjey left Port Nelson to head back to Greymouth on April 28, 2022.

It was a calm night and about 6pm, as he steamed out of Tasman Bay, he turned west towards Farewell Spit – the longest sandspit in the country; known for its strong ocean currents and as a grounding risk to vessels.

The facts recorded in the summary differ from Lockington’s theory about what happened, but Dunjey claims to have stopped near the spit and carried out a close-down procedure for the night.

Maritime NZ said Dunjey’s decision to leave Nelson without crew was “deliberate and intentional” and that he had done the nightly close-down in a risky area.

The maritime regulation and compliance authority said the high level of carelessness compounded the risk of grounding.

Judge Barkle said the radar alarm was either not set, or not set correctly, because Dunjey awoke at 2am to find the vessel aground, with waves crashing against it, halfway along the 35km spit.

According to the summary he turned on the bilge pumps and set the rudder in a way that might have helped to push him off, but the bilge pumps stopped working when the vessel filled with water, and the engine and electrics stopped working.

At 4am Dunjey sent out a mayday call, asking for a tow off the sandbar.

A Coastguard boat was sent from Nelson and arrived to find Dunjey clinging to Scorpio, which was by then adrift and underwater.

Dunjey was rescued and the Tasman District harbourmaster organised a salvage operation for the boat.

The end of Scorpio

Judge Barkle said Dunjey had relied on the boat’s instruments to alert him to any difficulties that arose, but he had not maintained a proper lookout, had underestimated the tidal currents and didn’t know until he was woken up that the boat was aground.

“Mr Acland suggests this was a nightmare for you, with crashing waves thrashing against the boat which threatened to break up.

“You were left clinging to it, waiting for help, and I accept that was a hugely fearful experience, but for Mr Lockington and his daughter Charmaine, equally it’s been a nightmare for them.”

Scorpio was towed to Port Tarakohe in Golden Bay where after seven months it was eventually dismantled.

With the repair bill for the damage from the grounding estimated at $250,000; and the insurance claim declined, Lockington could not meet the salvage recovery costs.

He told NZME that while he’s still “brassed off” about what happened, and he’s still fighting health issues, he’s not unhappy.

“I love my kids and I love my grandkids.”

Tracy Neal is a Nelson-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She was previously RNZ’s regional reporter in Nelson-Marlborough and has covered general news, including court and local government, for the Nelson Mail.

aarmaine Lockington told NZME she had no more tears left to cry.