Jeff wrote:
Wayne.B wrote:

On the other hand, when you trip the EPIRB, you're making a guess that
at some point in the future, perhaps several hours, thing will be so
bad that you'll need to get off in a hurry. Perhaps you have severe
structural damage, and you know the boat will sink if it gets any
worse. I don't think I'd want to spend a night 100 miles offshore in
that situation.

So this brings up the question, if you could quantify the risk, at what
point would you say, "please send a chopper"? Would you do it at 50%
risk? 10%? 90%? Or should you wait until you're stepping into the
liferaft?

I have old cruising friends who spent a horrible night many years ago at
the hands of a hurricane - I won't tell the story now, but they spent 8
hours struggling to save the boat, convinced they were going to die.
The next day they just drifted, recovering their strength. Shortly
thereafter, they said "If a helicopter appeared overhead then [after the
storm], we would have taken the ride." The funny thing is that
nowadays they don't carry an EPIRB because they don't think it's fair to
ask someone to risk their life because of their incompetence.
Fortunately, they don't do long passages.


Tripping the EPIRB is the electronic Mayday. Not leaving the boat would
mean that you called a false emergency and that is a crime.

Not having an EPIRB when offshore because "they don't think it's fair to
ask someone to risk their life because of their incompetence" is silly.
Once you are noted as missing the authorities will come looking. The
EPIRB just saves them time and money.

We ran into that situation recently in the Van-Ilse 360 race. All boats
now require an EPIRB since a multihull flipped offshore (2001) and the
crew spent a miserable 24 hours or so before they were noted as overdue,
by then the search zone was enormous. An EPIRB would have got help much
sooner and made the search shorter and cheaper. With the money saved
the Coast Guard could have paid for everyone in the race to have an EPIRB.

On another point, all boats in that race are now required to also carry
a handheld VHF in a ditch bag reachable when the boat is upside down so
they can also call for help when the fitted VHF is underwater.

Gaz