Log of SV Wendaway

SPOT personal locator beacon

Regulars on the Amigo and Southbound cruisers nets on single side radio will be familiar with amateur weather forecaster Don Anderson’s frequent bouts of on-air frustration.  Idiots abound on the high seas, as we all know.

But Dr. Anderson, known for his energetic candour,  reserves a special quantum of vitriol for family and friends who pester the US Coast Guard with frantic calls about loved ones who did not report in at a predetermined time – usually single-handers who were ’sposed to be in Mag Bay last Tuesday, or are now three days late in getting to Puerto Vallarta and “still no word from dad!!”.

What happens is that someone starts to worry, calls the Coast Guard, which then issues a Health and Welfare statement regarding, in this case that I am working up to, a certain Mike Joyce aboard the SV Interlude.

I recently got this email from Lt. Tm Martin, at the Alameda Rescue Coordination Center:

“I received a call from an Andrea Scott tonight who called me from Alamo, CA concerning her husband Mike Joyce who was going to be traveling from Cabo San Lucas to Magdalena Bay starting 0300 30 Dec 2009 expecting to arrive 0200 31 Dec 2009. Andrea wasn’t 100% sure if Mike had an HF radio O/B, but I wondered if there was anything you could do for us to locate Mike’s 36′ Catalina INTERLUDE. She’s white on white with the numbers 1664 on the sail. He does have a Spot device and I will attempt to contact them next together with the Mexican Navy to see if I can confirm departure/arrival. He sailed down with the Baja Ha Ha and is making his way north. Please, call if you have any questions and ask for myself or the SAR duty Officer.

Regards,

Timothy Martin, LT, USCG”

As it turns out, the truly crucial words in this request for assistance are these: “He does have a Spot device…”

I duly sent out a copy of LT,. Martin’s request to all our net controllers on both Amigo and Southbound nets and a lot of folks became aware that a 36 foot sailboat might be in trouble.

Dr. Don Anderson of Summer Passage Radio

As Don Anderson no doubt predicted, Mr. Joyce was indeed ok, but his SPOT personal locator beacon was not.

Couple of days ago I received a follow-up from Lt. Martin:

Mark,

The Spot device for INTERLUDE finally transmitted a message and she is safe in Turtle Bay. Please, cancel the watch/look-out for INTERLUDE. The owner/operator thought he was transmitting when pressing “OK” on his device, but in reality nothing was happening.

Thanks,

Tim Martin, LT, USCG

You have to admire Tim Martin’s restraint. Cool as Coasties always are. If there is a lesson in this episode, he wisely leaves it to others to deliver. To people like Dr. Don Anderson.

This is indeed a particular problem with the SPOT device. For a hundred bucks or so, you buy the cute orange unit, set up an account for another hundred per year, and you now can let the world know you are either OK (you’d hit the “OK” button), or not (press “911″).  A signal is transmitted to an orbiting satellite, which conveys your present location, details on the owner of the device, and whether you are having the time of your life, or perhaps a final  transmission that your life has apparently run out of time.

I have one; it is erratic and you have to watch it very carefully. Mostly it works – it is slow, to be sure – but mostly it works. Family and friends get an “I’m OK” message from the skipper along with a link to Google Maps which pinpoints where the boat was when the skipper sent the signal.

But sometimes it doesn’t work. When I send an OK message, I count the number of seconds that it takes for the device to acknowledge that the msg has been sent. Usually it take 2 – 3 minutes before confirmation is received, or sometimes, never. This is what happened to Mike on SV Interlude.

And that leaves the Coasties in a jam. Do they ignore the entreaties of panicked love ones?  Not bloody likely.

My friend Gordon Hanson, a former USCG Captain and rescue helicopter pilot, explained to me that when a call like that comes in, they gear up as the situation requires. They don’t gamble where human life is at stake. They can’t. It’s an expensive proposition and the waste is extraordinary (not to mention the risk to their lives when they scramble in the worst conditions imaginable).

But this is exactly the situation that sends Don off on paroxysms, nay – arias of contempt. What was the family thinking?

Of course the family is not particularly to blame. They know dad, or hubby, or brother, has a SPOT. They have received a string of I’m OK messages in the past.

The "I'm OK" button

Now they are faced not with a false alarm, but with the absence of something and they simply do not know how to evaluate this. They may not have ever sailed themselves, and do not realize that cruisers do not run on a schedule like the trains do (or at least, used to do).  We become victims of the coolest technologies imaginable as we accord them godly powers.

Perhaps SPOT teases us for the sport. Maybe some evil computer programmer anticipated our addiction to these things and decided to have a bit of fun.

Or rather, a spot of fun.

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