At point should I call for rescue?

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by sailorboy1

I rember someone having a rescue called out when he was just resting

Who was that.

[RiverRat37]

Please, please, please ... once you know they're alright be sure to notify the authorities. Quickly. There are those stories where the lost were found but the searchers didn't know and were still searching. Not good.

[jim King]

Good on you for watching out for your fellow sailor.

[mariner-dovb]

There and is another consideration of calling for rescue: Whom and where.
Last Oktober (maybe a little late in the year) I wanted to sail (single handed) from Preveza (Greece) to Taormina (Sicily, Italy) in just one stretch and announced that to my folks at home. However, I got into very bad weather, and my mizzen got torn. I decided to turn back, and therefore I was 4 instead of 2 days out of reach of mobile Phone and VHF. My Folks at home got worried and called the Greek as well as Italian coast guard. As soon as I got into VHF reach of the Greek coast, I found, they had started a PAN PAN message. I canceled this at once and several times by VHF, and assured them, that there was no emergency.
I wanted to got into Preveza Port and told them about it.
However they insisted, that this was an emergency and kidnapped me some miles off the coast, handcuffed me, took over my boat, and because they were unable to sail it, towed it into Levkada harbour, and caused some considerable damage.
In several discussions they they repeatedly told me, all this would be "according to Greek law" and had to do so for a torn mizzen is a emergency.

Finally I had to pay almost 1000€ to get out of this, and got no receipt for that payment.
So You may think about this what you want.
Greetings
nw

[canyonbat]

Originally Posted by redneckrob

As a retired Coast Guard helicopter pilot I'll tell you that calling the Coast Guard to express your concern is a bit like reefing. If you're thinking about doing it, you should stop thinking and do it. Like reefing, there's little harm done if it turns out you were wrong. Some radio calls will be made to see if they can locate the boat, cutters and aircraft on the proposed track will keep an eye out or maybe get diverted from a routine training mission to take a look. Maybe a crew will get launched, but that's what they do. On the flip side, there may have been an uncorrelated mayday or flare sighting that wasn't enough to form a good search area, but when correlated with your information completely changes it into a viable search. It might mean the difference between an unsurvivable overnight and an uncomfortable 4 hours. It may allow crews to start searching during the day and avoid losing 10 hours of less effective night searching. It may allow a good weather routine rescue vs a later bad weather dangerous one. Give the professionals the information and help them out with the specific information only you know about your friends and they'll take it from there. No one will criticize you for it in the least.

One of the best responses I have ever read on this forum.

[Rblakenyc]

Originally Posted by sailorboy1

I rember someone having a rescue called out when he was just resting

https://media2.giphy.com/media/paRbapEqsVqyA/giphy.gif

Edit: Was hoping to show the Monty Python "resting parrot" gif - follow the link if sufficiently amused or google the skit.

[belizesailor]

Originally Posted by itipou

Update:
They finally arrived after 36 hours and 170nm, everything went fine, the ship is just not a good upwinder.

Thanks a lot for your answers !

With all the options available today for offshore comm's, its really a deficiency for boats not to have some means of communication aboard. At the very least so they can avoid creating unnecessary concern or dispatching SAR crews unnecessarily.

[JPA Cate]

A long time ago, someone reported Jim and me overdue: we were 4 hours later than they expected us, on passage from Bora Bora to Hilo, HI. We had spoken to the people on the HF radio that morning. What caused our delay, was the wind had backed off for the last 20 miles or so, as we came under the lee of the island. We did not feel grateful, we felt embarrassed. Having a huge fuss was not what we wanted.

Therefore, I think you should consider the people and their experience level before reporting them overdue. There was a long discussion about calling overdue for a delivery skipper who is a member of this forum, when he was using a Spot, and forum members were following his journey. His average days runs were much slower than people had expected. Eventually, one of his friends did report him. He was not in need of intervention. If he sees this, maybe he'll explain it from his point of view.

What people really need to understand is that it is up to the skipper to decide whether or not s/he needs help. It is also up to the skipper to extend what they think their estimated time of arrival is, far enough to account for variations in conditions, so that rescues are not begun prematurely. We need to be reasonable thinking about it, too, not only do weather conditions change, but you can easily lose communications with land; electronics fail according to whim; wires come loose; if you need to heave to to make repairs, it will take time.

Ann

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by JPA Cate

A long time ago, someone reported Jim and me overdue: we were 4 hours later than they expected us, on passage from Bora Bora to Hilo, HI. We had spoken to the people on the HF radio that morning. What caused our delay, was the wind had backed off for the last 20 miles or so, as we came under the lee of the island. We did not feel grateful, we felt embarrassed. Having a huge fuss was not what we wanted.

Therefore, I think you should consider the people and their experience level before reporting them overdue. There was a long discussion about calling overdue for a delivery skipper who is a member of this forum, when he was using a Spot, and forum members were following his journey. His average days runs were much slower than people had expected. Eventually, one of his friends did report him. He was not in need of intervention. If he sees this, maybe he'll explain it from his point of view.

What people really need to understand is that it is up to the skipper to decide whether or not s/he needs help. It is also up to the skipper to extend what they think their estimated time of arrival is, far enough to account for variations in conditions, so that rescues are not begun prematurely. We need to be reasonable thinking about it, too, not only do weather conditions change, but you can easily lose communications with land; electronics fail according to whim; wires come loose; if you need to heave to to make repairs, it will take time.

Ann

Naah.. make em read the whole thread Ann..

[belizesailor]

Originally Posted by JPA Cate

A long time ago, someone reported Jim and me overdue: we were 4 hours later than they expected us, on passage from Bora Bora to Hilo, HI. We had spoken to the people on the HF radio that morning. What caused our delay, was the wind had backed off for the last 20 miles or so, as we came under the lee of the island. We did not feel grateful, we felt embarrassed. Having a huge fuss was not what we wanted.

Therefore, I think you should consider the people and their experience level before reporting them overdue. There was a long discussion about calling overdue for a delivery skipper who is a member of this forum, when he was using a Spot, and forum members were following his journey. His average days runs were much slower than people had expected. Eventually, one of his friends did report him. He was not in need of intervention. If he sees this, maybe he'll explain it from his point of view.

What people really need to understand is that it is up to the skipper to decide whether or not s/he needs help. It is also up to the skipper to extend what they think their estimated time of arrival is, far enough to account for variations in conditions, so that rescues are not begun prematurely. We need to be reasonable thinking about it, too, not only do weather conditions change, but you can easily lose communications with land; electronics fail according to whim; wires come loose; if you need to heave to to make repairs, it will take time.

Ann

This also underscores that it is best to leave a specific float plan with a responsible party ashore so that they are not left in the position, like the OP, of wondering what they should do. The float plan should give specific parameters of when to report a vessel overdue. No embarassment in being reported overdue, just good procedure I think.

"Vessel overdue" is an important distinction too. No need in such cases to call the calvary, just report the vessel overdue to appropriate authorities, then they are aware of the situation. They can then issue a "BOLO" or similar and then can decided when/if a full on SAR operation is warranted.

In fact, Ive called in an overdue from my own boat before to the USCG. We got caught in unexpectedly horrendous weather conditions (hurricane strength, unforecast) maydays/rescues were going on all around us. I just informed the USCG that we were hove-to, all was well aboard (we were making dinner in fact), and gave our position. They noted the info and called us back once an hour to make sure all was still good and to get an updated position. If things had gone wrong, then they already knew our last position etc and could have made much more effective response.

Really, its no big deal these days to leave a float plan and have comms aboard so you can update your ashore contact and totally avoid scenarios like this one (which are all too common).

The argument could be made that in this case they were only going 65 miles, but a lot can go wrong even on short runs...I knew a very experienced sailor who died recently on a run of similar distance. I prefer to let someone ashore know my plans even if just going for a day sail.

[JohnT]

There are always two sides to a coin and calling or reporting a friend as “overdue” is actually a very difficult task for somebody ashore. Around 2008 I was delivering a new cat from Cape Town to the BVI’s and had departed St Helena island heading for the north coast of South America. I was in contact with Ham radio operators in South Africa every three or four days, but atmospherics were starting to weaken and HF radio signals were getting to be very poor to non-existent. About three days from our waypoint off Natal I was hailed by a passing cargo vessel, asking the name of our vessel. It was given and I was informed that MRCC Cape Town had put out a overdue message for us as we “had lost communication”. They kindly sent a message to MRCC Cape Town that we were all good with no problems on board.

The second incident resulted in the loss of three lives. A cat was on delivery from Cape Town to Phuket, departing Cape Town on 25 December 2014. For some reason the skipper was instructed to take a route via the Southern Ocean towards Australia and then cut up to the northern end of Sumatra and to Phuket - a strange and dangerous route to take during cyclone season. The vessel was soon in trouble with cyclone Banzi passing over it on 19 January 2015 and all communication with the vessel being lost. Instead of informing MRCC Cape Town of the loss of communication with the vessel, the Cape Town dispatch office of the delivery company . . . . did absolutely nothing for 25 days, thinking they would just wait to see if the vessel arrived in Phuket. The upturned hull of the catamaran was spotted floating by a passing ship a year after being lost. It was found that if the delivery office had simply picked up the telephone and reported the loss of communication, there was a ship approximately 4 nautical miles away that could have rendered assistance. RIP Anthony Murray, Jaryd Payne and Reginald Robertson.

Sometimes it is difficult to make that call. But as was posted above, when in doubt, just do it - it may save lives!

[skipgundlach]

Well said, and thank you.

We are the beneficiaries of a ride in one of your red helicopters.

And thank you for your service!

[skipgundlach]

My apologies for not having included the quote from the retired coastie...

However further to this discussion, someone had been following our progress using our spot transmitter.

When he saw us do a donut in the middle of the little Bahama Banks and then the signal disappeared, he was concerned and called the US Coast guard.

They and Basra searched for us for quite some time, which was interesting given that my spot location was easily found.

We were not "found"ose and we made the news on radio, television, and in print.

Color us embarrassed.

However when we spoke with the Coast guard later, they said they were absolutely thrilled that someone would have called in that regard and assured us that we should not have been worried about the use of their resources.

Lesson learned and confirmed with the early response from the retired coastee. And thanks again for your service!

[skipgundlach]

My apologies for the repetitive posting. This is my telephone and I have little to no editing capability.

I forgot to add that we had been becalmed, and with absolutely no one in sight for 200 mi in any direction, we threw out the hook and turned off our spot locator.

Because, initially, it was confusing to us, we had not turned it back on the following day. It was that lack of signal as we continued which had our correspondent concerned...

Furthermore, given that there was no traffic anywhere, we had not turned on our vhf. Had we, we would have heard the Coast guard and BASRA calling and we would have been just fine.

Lesson learned: we never move from our Anchorage or if we are hove to without having the VHF turned on.

[Kd9truck]

As a retired Coast Guard helicopter pilot I'll tell you that calling the Coast Guard to express your concern is a bit like reefing. If you're thinking about doing it, you should stop thinking and do it. Like reefing, there's little harm done if it turns out you were wrong. Some radio calls will be made to see if they can locate the boat, cutters and aircraft on the proposed track will keep an eye out or maybe get diverted from a routine training mission to take a look. Maybe a crew will get launched, but that's what they do. On the flip side, there may have been an uncorrelated mayday or flare sighting that wasn't enough to form a good search area, but when correlated with your information completely changes it into a viable search. It might mean the difference between an unsurvivable overnight and an uncomfortable 4 hours. It may allow crews to start searching during the day and avoid losing 10 hours of less effective night searching. It may allow a good weather routine rescue vs a later bad weather dangerous one. Give the professionals the information and help them out with the specific information only you know about your friends and they'll take it from there. No one will criticize you for it in the least.

Thank you Redneckrob, (thank you for your service🙏&#127995 I would add to the OP ....in light of the fact there is no “trackable” way of you tracking them, you should alert the coast guard.
(They may have the unidentifiable blip on their technology, and they are certainly in the business of knowing what “blips” on their screens are. )