The RENA was interesting. A Joint owned ship 49% being owned by Israel. It had been previously impounded in Australia [I think] and was deemed not to be fit for sea. The Vessel had been long suspected in being involved in smuggling things for the Israeli government [this is just information that became available in the MSM press].

You don't know what they dropped off first before the crash.
It reminded me of the Mikhail Lermontov incident.
1986 16 Feb the vessel indicated to be the Mikhail Lermontov Sunk in the Marlborough Sounds. It lies directly between the Two US operated Spy Bases in NZ.

This is what happened.
The vessel at the bottom of the Sounds is clearly not the same vessel as the one entered in the Loyd's of London register. It had 3 NZ pilots on board for the Strait crossing and navigation of the Marlborough Sounds. According the Maritime inquiry the Vessel scraped on one side [the side facing down on the bottom] but marks are visible on the upward facing side also. It scraped on both sides, a passenger vessel was loaded down to the loading limit lines, that is damn near impossible for a passenger vessel, it would have to be loaded with cargo as well to do that and a lot of cargo.

What happened after hitting the rocks was even more remarkable. The Ship then continued into the sounds before taking on enough water to start listing. Rather than call NZ authorities as the Pilots suggested the Captain called Russia directly and started a conversation in Russian that we can only speculate about. At this point the captain took control and beached the Ship nose first on one of the many sandy beaches that line the Sounds and many adjoining bays. At this stage passengers say they witnessed three rubber dinghy's with about 20 or more people dressed in black on board depart the ship paddle for the shore and disappear into he scrub.
The ship was perfectly beached and safe, but the Captain then decides to back it out to more deep water still refusing the pilot's request to contact NZ Authorities. He then proceeds to find the spot where the vessel lies and let it sink, finally contacting NZ authorities to come and pick up the disembarking passengers on the life boats.

The Russian government spent 12 months recovering whatever was in the bottom of that Ship and banned all people from the spot and diving in the Area while they completed their task. The NZ Government said there was no need for an Inquiry into the incident which caused an Immediate strike by the NZ maritime Union as this was unprecedented and they forced the inquiry to take place.
Without the inquiry we would not have known the ship was beached and in good order then put back to water and allowed to sink, while in communication with he Russian government the whole time. For some strange reason the ships manifest was out by 28 crew, no explanation was ever offered as to why.

Who knows what the Russians were up to, clearly they had found another Ship dressed it up as the Mikhail Lurmentov tasked for some sort or purpose if not exactly what took place later. Whatever it was, it was very heavy equipment and was fine with being underwater.

When the RENA went into the rocks I wondered what the Israeli's were smuggling into the country. NZ has had problems with their spy's. The Previous PM kicked them out of the country for 6 months[closed their embassy] while we kept 6 of their spies on ice, all for being caught making Fake passports for their spies using the dead names of NZ kids from cemeteries, the classic really. It made countries look much harder at NZ passports which wouldn't have made our Allies happy who also use fake NZ passports but with NZ sanction.

A group of Israeli spies was uncovered during the aftermath of the Christchurch Earthquake and quickly covered up after 5 phone calls from the Israeli PM to the NZ PM in the space of 4 hours, apparently unprecedented in NZ Israel relations. The NZ PM when questioned just said they were chatting. It was quickly covered up and had to be rewritten after some of the NZ press were a little quick off the mark and used real facts instead of supplied facts.

We know the Israeli's come here to spy on what the USA is spying on. They might be doing something else [like spying on UFO flight testing or observing what gets sent to Antarctica from NZ] but we are not sure.
Interestingly enough we know the NZ Spy agency was using the Spy bases to intercept U.N communications during the 80's, aorund 80% of what they were doing involved spying on the U.N. [presumably on behalf of HRM, or the CIA/NSA].
I know a guy who was in Coms in the NZ Army who had done some exercises in the Spy base. He just told me it was a communications set up that could transmit and pickup on transmissions pretty much everywhere on the planet. The Twin Domes are usually covered so no satellites can see which direction the dishes are facing.

There is one in the South Island of NZ and one in the North, and the Mikhail Lurmentov is in a linctly between the two.

Who knows what was on the RENA. My Brother looked into it, a lot of the containers were listed as Empty, he says that is where you smuggle stuff, the empty containers are always on the outside of the stacks to protect the good cargo. The real valuable containers are on the inside compartments, those would have been intact for the most part.