There was a thread on this forum in the past couple of months about a
rescue from the sailing vessel Celadon 90 miles off of Cape Hatteras in late November. I remembered reading that one of the crew members had a Spot on board.
There was also, near the end of the thread, a copy of the official Coast Guard report of the incident. So I went back and reread it.
In this case, the Coast Guard initially got the
distress call via
VHF. I assume this was a relayed call from a merchant vessel, since the sailboat was 90 miles
offshore, and a merchant vessel is reported in the log as being in contact with the sailboat.
Interestingly enough, though, the Coast Guard logged notification of a Spot 911 alert 42 minutes later. In that 42 minutes, the 911
service had contacted the shore side contact of the Spot owner, who had confirmed the owner was on a
boat sailing to
Bermuda.
This seems like pretty impressive
offshore emergency service from an $80 piece of
equipment.
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