Sea Kayak Rescues: EPIRBs and Personal Locater Beacons (PLBs)
PLBs Are Smaller, Less Expensive and a Better Choice for Sea Kayaking and Kayak Fishing
Key to an EPIRB (and to a personal locater beacon or PLB, a more appropriate, smaller and cheaper alternative for the sea kayaker or kayak fisherman) is to register your unit. Registration is free.
The database of registration, which the CG accesses when they receive your signal, are your name, boat type, home port and emergency contact info.
The advantages of EPIRBS and PLBs over gps messaging devices like the SPOT beacon is that they are unaffected by weather or cloud cover. Also their signals are sent to the Coast Guard via government, noncommercial satellites.
Personal locater beacons can be rented weekly from outfits like plbrentals.com, a good choice if you're a remote waters kayak fisherman or sea kayaker who's likely to be out of vhf radio range.
The more popular PLB models are made by ARC. They're a good choice for paddlers who venture onto remote waters where the weather can turn bad in a hurry or where requesting help via VHF is likely to be difficult if not impossible due to mountainous shoreline terrain, distance from Coast Guard high site antennas, etc.
To read more about sea kayaking and kayak fishing, see the content-rich blogs Sea Kayaking Dot Net and NorthAmerican Kayak Fishing.
Published by Dave Williams
Outdoors writer Dave Williams lives in Arlington, Massachusetts. View profile
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