Chairman
In 1999 I was one of the auto hover S76 pilots that Ausar failed to call out for reasons I won't go into here.
As Trimpot and others have said, I don't believe anyone was winched out of the sea at night by a crew in a non auto machine.
By requiring auto hover, I mean winching at night either from small boats or directly out of the sea. I do not mean large ships which have plenty of lighting and visual cues.
I see on the news yesterday that the ATSB have recommended some sort of SAS to be fitted. Maybe they read Pprune too!