The skipper of a fishing boat drank “eight or nine beers” while heading home from port before falling asleep at the wheel, crashing down a bank and writing off his $13,000 vehicle.

Steven Tony Day had just completed a long, hard trip at sea, his lawyer said, and was driving home along the Motueka Valley Highway when he fell asleep, crashed his Mitsubishi Outlander through a farmer’s fence and down a bank.

A subsequent check by police found he had 889 micrograms of alcohol per litre of breath, making him three-and-a-half times over the limit. The police summary of facts said: “He’d drunk eight or nine beers while driving home and fell asleep.”

Day, who has one previous drink-drive offence dating back 18 years, escaped a potentially much higher penalty than the $750 fine he was given in the Nelson District Court today on a charge of driving with excess breath alcohol.

It was because he had promptly fixed the farmer’s fence after the July 4 crash, and acknowledged in a letter how he understood the seriousness of what he had done and how he had placed other drivers at risk.

His lawyer, Mark Dollimore, said Day had just arrived back from sea and had been working long hours when he decided to drive from the West Coast to the Motueka area, a three-and-half-hour drive.

He said Day, who had left school at age 14, had always wanted to be a skipper, and this had “literally and figuratively” been a big wake-up call.

Judge Jo Rielly said the summary of facts was “concerning reading”, and that drinking eight or nine beers while driving was “an incredibly bad decision”.

“Then, you fell asleep and crashed.”

Judge Rielly said Day’s letter also acknowledged he understood how much he had “mucked up” and how it was a big error in judgment.

She said it seemed he was a model employee and his employer had indicated their support for Day, who held a senior position within the unnamed fishing company.

He was given credit for his early guilty plea, and fined just over half what he might have been.

On a charge of careless driving, he was convicted and discharged.

Day was also disqualified from driving for the statutory 28-day period while applying for a year-long interlock licence, followed by a three-year zero alcohol licence.

Judge Rielly warned him that if he did not succeed in getting an interlock licence he would remain disqualified from driving.

Tracy Neal is a Nelson-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She was previously RNZ’s regional reporter in Nelson-Marlborough and has covered general news, including court and local government for the Nelson Mail.