In article ,
Dan intrceptor@gmaildotcom wrote:

For small inland lakes, a cell phone will work best since few people
monitor a VHF on small, recreational, lakes.

Not sure for the small lakes, but you may be way better off with VHF, at
least if it is equipped with DSC and hooked up to a GPS:
See http://www.boatsmart.net/viewstory.p...d=70&year=2003
You should have high mounted coast guard antennas by now if the plan has
been followed.
These will reach 30-40 nautical miles, provided you have a fixed mount
VHF (which has 25W transmision power vs 5W of a handheld).
A handheld unit is useful as a backup should fire damage the battery the
fixed mounted VHF is hooked up to - which it usually does. But then a
17' boat is not that big.

If it works as I would guess, you can send off an emergency call with
all the details in 10 seconds of your time.
It will contain the nature of the distress situation (man over board,
fire, aground etc), the precise location and your boat's registered
identity (MMSI, linked to information of size, kind, contact numbers etc
of vessel) automatically until it gets acknowledged by USCG. I hope you
will never need it but if you do, you will be glad you have DSC+GPS. No
more guessing, no more spelling.

See GMDSS and DSC keywords (on google, or eg
http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/marcomms/...ss_systems.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_..._Safety_System

HTH

Marc

PS: Over here in Europe using mobile phones for emergencies on sea is
strongly discouraged - because it will only allow you to call one
station instead of all stations within reach, because some numbers are
not permanently watched, because you may be in an area not covered,
because commercial vessels will not play relay, because you do not reach
professional help etc - but of course use it if it is all you have.

--
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