Sea Kayak Rescues: VHF Radio

One key element to sea kayaking rescues is knowing how to use a vhf radio to issue a mayday call if your situation exceeds your ability to cope. Say a paddler has capsized and despite your best efforts has ended up stranded in a rock garden where the shorebreak is overwhelming. It's obvious the paddler is injured and will need more assistance than you or your group can provide.

Or say one or several in your group capsize in fast offshore tidal currents like those found off Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, Monomoy Island off Cape Cod, or at the mouth of the Kennebec River in Maine. They are being swept too quickly offshore for you to help them.

The key in these situations is knowing how to contact the Coast Guard, via vhf channel 16, to request assistance. You need describe the situation but also the location and how many persons are involved. Doing so makes the Coast Guard watchstander's job easier: he or she can pass on a more detailed report to rescue resources.

Listen to an example of -- had it not been a felony -- a vhf radio mayday call. The caller identifies himself as crewmeber of a New Bedford, Massachusetts scallop fishing boat in danger of sinking on Nantucket Shoals off Cape Cod. The caller claims that his boat is taking on water and has lost its battery power and radar, and he can't give the Coast Guard watchstander his latitude and longitude.

Note how the watchstander asks for specifics on the vessel's location after trying to parse the skipper's coordinates.

First, do the best you can to describe where you're calling from when issuing a Mayday. You'll need gps coordinates, the ability to read a chart well enough to describe where you are (so many miles southeast of Shirttail Point, for example), or local knowledge deep enough that you can describe your proximity to local landmarks - northwest of Race Point for example.

Either that or you need to know where you are by way of local knowledge or quickly read your location off the gps you haven't dropped overboard or whose batteries haven't failed.

Failure to describe your location gives the Coast Guard -- as well other boaters who might be nearby -- a that much more difficult job of having to figure out where you are. They can't come to your aid as quickly as you might need if they don't have a good fix on your location.

Last complication you want is for the Coast Guard to have to resort to cumbersome triangulation, off your broadcast signal, to figure out where you are.

So be sure you can name your location: the bay you're in, the body of water, latitude and longitude coordinates if you have them, a well-known submerged or land based landmark.

Listen to VHF radio calls to the Coast Guard and certain patterns emerge. One is that maydays are often picked up by more than two Coast Guard stations. Another is that one station will often hand off a call to the other. Another is caller panic, especially when conditions are overwhelming. The panic creates audio clipping and garbled calls.

Commercial vessels and licensed captains are much more likely to give their exact location, and to do so relatively calmly. If the Coast Guard can't receive your location, but knows that you're in trouble, they'll typically transmit a pan-pan call on channel 16 asking other boaters to be on the lookout for you.
As for the caller in the above audio, he was arrested, brought to jail, sentenced and fined.

To read more about kayak fishing and ocean kayaking (sea kayaking), see the content-rich blogs Sea Kayaking Dot Net and NorthAmerican Kayak Fishing.