As an island nation New Zealanders have boating in the blood. Everyone’s a ‘boatie’, as we tend to call them. The ability to take to the water is ingrained in our national psyche. But grim statistics show that this very familiarity with the water leads to complacency. Many boaties are stuck in their old ways, or think themselves ‘too experienced’ to get into trouble. Others wrongly believe their mobile phone are a sufficient enough precaution. Despite the fact that incidents often happen outside cellphone coverage and phones are prone to water damage. Incident analysis shows that 58% of boating fatalities fail to carry adequate communications equipment.

In what was an animation first, this entire film was physically created from the scanned wreckage of damaged boats gathered from all over the country. Seperately, the pieces of wreckage were meaningless. Collectively, in the hands of an animator, a ghostly visual story began to emerge. From building seascapes out of ripped boat canvas to hand-animating gannets made from fibreglass shards of damaged hulls, we dramatized the story of Murray’s ordeal at sea. The finished result added huge emotional resonance to Murray’s own story. Many boaties, each with their own story to tell, contributed to the making of this film through donating their own salvaged boats and shared their particular story on social media. Through the jarring realisation that someone’s ruined pride and joy had been used to visualise the message, the hard to reach boating community of New Zealand got behind this project.