A personal grievance between a Port Otago worker and recreational boat user has sparked safety concerns about the logging of trip reports out of and around Otago Harbour.
The recent incident involved a recreational boatie attempting to log a trip report through Port Otago, and debate about which radio channel should be used.
It was alleged a Port Otago worker would not record a trip report and advised a boatie to use another channel.
Specific details of the incident have been kept private, but it prompted a short investigation by Port Otago and the Otago Regional Council into safety procedures.
Yesterday, the council confirmed the incident was a one-off occurrence resulting from a personal grievance.
Port Otago chief executive Geoff Plunket said nothing had changed in relation to the recording of trip reports from recreational boaties, but he encouraged all recreational harbour users to lodge reports through channel 62 (Chalmers radio) rather than the harbour channel, channel 14.
Mr Plunket said, even if trip reports were lodged with Port Otago through channel 14, recreational boaties would have to switch to channel 62 once out of the harbour because the channel 14 frequency did not extend far.
"If someone went out and wanted assistance on channel 14, we wouldn't hear them.
Channel 62 exists exactly for this purpose," he said.
Port Chalmers recreational fisherman Warren Lewis said it was vital a trip-logging system was in place and maintained.
Recreational boaties often required information about commercial vessel movements, and in turn provided reports of occurrences within the harbour to authorities, he said.
"It goes both ways. A lot of recreational boaties report problems in the harbour like logs floating around, and we would be extremely concerned if this service was discontinued," he said.
If recreational trip reports could not be logged with local harbour authorities, boaties would lobby "long and hard" for the service to be reinstated, Mr Lewis said.
"There's a hell of an extra workload put on national maritime safety radio if they have to log our trips. Up to now we've had a very good rapport with them [Port Otago], and they do a brilliant job," he said.
