On Sun, 11 Nov 2007 19:29:46 GMT, Bruce in Alaska
wrote:

In article ,
Wayne.B wrote:

On Sat, 10 Nov 2007 07:29:36 -0500, "Armond Perretta"
wrote:

Unfortunately this abuses 16, so I don't often mention my boat name, just
something like "small white sailboat 400 yards on your bow," etc.

As long as you are calling someone and keep it brief, there is no
abuse of 16. You can also switch to low power which will limit the
range to a couple of miles.

Well you may not see it as "Abuse", However, by International Convention
(International Maritime Organization, or IMO, an appendige of the United
Nations) Marine Channel 16, IS a Calling and Distress Channel ONLY.....

One mans "Abuse", may be anothers, "Little White Lie"......

The reason that I don't consider that particular example to be abuse
of 16, is because it is a call to another boat (permitted), that
contains a few brief words of other information. Since there is no
prolonged exchange over multiple transmissions, it is hard to construe
that as abuse except possibly in a narrow technical sense. Ideally
that kind of "bridge-to-bridge" transmission would take place at low
power on channel 13 but many pleasure boats do not monitor 13. The
only time that we monitor 13 is in harbors with a lot of commercial
traffic.