An Air Force plane is on its way back to New Zealand after a
fruitless search for a catamaran in distress near Samoa.
The search and rescue effort was sparked by an emergency locator
beacon being set off - but rescuers now think someone probably thew
their beacon away and it went off by mistake.
"We are confident there is no one in distress," a
spokeswoman for Maritime NZ told the Herald.
The NZ Defence Force tweeted this morning that an Orion aircraft
had left its Auckland base around 6am to look for a 30ft catamaran,
after it set off a locator beacon near Apia, Samoa's capital.