Channel 16 Mayday: f/v Determined, Nantucket

Listen above to a fine example of how to make a mayday call: exact location, exact situation, narrative of what is happening as it happens.

Problem is the caller was making the call from his house, falsifying the location of a New Bedord, Ma. fishing vessel he had worked on and which was at dock, in port, at the time of his call.

The caller, Brian Feener, a Fairhaven, Massachusetts commercial fisherman (East Coast of the US), made the false mayday call to Coast Guard Woods Hole, Massachusetts a few years ago using a powerful land-based VHF.

The audio was later was used as evidence in Brian's indictment, fining, and sentencing. He got a year-and-a-half in prison.

Brian sure knew what he was doing. His call was a successful canard because of its level of detail, even though he at first gets the location of Great Round Shoals, off Nantucket, Massachusetts, wrong, sounds drunker as the call continues, and finally asks that the Coast Guard's training tall ship Eagle be sent his way to effect his rescues.

The call shows how seriously the Coast Guard and the US attorney view hoax mayday calls.

Using a variety of methods that Luke Pinneo, Public Affairs Petty Officer at Coast Guard Boston wouldn't reveal, Brian was ratted out by waterfront locals.

In addition to jail time Brian got whacked with a $100,000 fine.

The call was picked up on channel 21 and controlled by a VHF radio watchstander at station Woods Hole overlooking Martha's Vineyard, the Elizabeth Islands and Nantucket Sound.

The fisherman's father, Gary Feener, was killed in 1998 by during a violent altercation with a fellow crewman on a docked swordfishing boat in Newfoundland.

Below: Gary Feener, Brian's father, on the New Bedford waterfront shortly before he was killed by a shotgun blast in Newfoundland (New Bedford Standard-Times photo):
Listen to more VHF radio audio:

VHF radio pan-pan (caller is switched to channel 22a by the Coast Guard)
VHF radio mayday (grounded vessel's call is picked up by two Coast Guard stations)
VHF radio mayday (sinking vessel gives only broad local descriptors)
VHF radio scuba mayday (caller's understandable panic garbles communications)
VHF radio's utility in seakayakers' rescue by Coast Guard helicopter

mashup copyright 2008 North American Kayak Fishing
audio courtesy US Coast Guard
Feener photo copyright New Bedford Standard-Times