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Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
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 |
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