Marine VHF Radio Mayday Calls/Ch. 16: How-to/2

Don't be put off by the blurry screen above. It gets crisp when you push play. The file opens a subtitled audio clip of a vhf ch. 16 distress call from a New Bedford scallop-fishing boat in danger of sinking on Nantucket Shoals off Massachusetts (US).

Read the transcript.

Read tips on vhf radio use.

What to expect when calling for help via ch. 16 on VHF

Read a discussion of VHF radios that use DSC to broadcast maydays that digitally include your lat. and long. coordinates.

The vessel in the above audio clip is taking on water, has lost its battery power and radar, and can't give the Coast Guard radio watchstander its exact latitude and longitude.

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

This should send home the importance of doing the best you can to know where you're calling from when issuing a Mayday.

Of course, you'll need to be able to read charts well enough to describe where you are (2 miles southeast of Shirttail Point, for example). Either that or you know where you are by way of local knowledge, or can read your location off the gps you haven't dropped overboard or whose batteries haven't crapped out.

Failure to describe your location gives the Coast Guard, as well as any boater who might be nearby, a harder job of having to figure out where you are...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, your distance and bearing from a buoy, a submerged or land-based landmark.

You'll hear the broadcast's volume change abruptly when the watchstander changes monitor levels.

Listen to other VHF radio audio files:

mayday
(grounded vessel's call is picked up by two Coast Guard stations)
scuba mayday
(a fatality; caller's understandable panic garbles communications)
mayday
(sinking vessel gives broad local descriptors of its location)
pan-pan
caller is switched to channel 22a, as protocol, by the Coast Guard)
false distress call
(caller was later arrested, indicted, jailed)
VHF radio's utility in paddllers' rescue by a Coast Guard helicopter
copyright 2008 North American Kayak Fishing
audio courtesy US Coast Guard
inconsistent video subtitle font sizes are Apple's fault
thanks to wtpaddlers.org and westcoastpaddler.com for related discussion links