Sometimes mayday calls on channel 16 are too weak or garbled for the Coast Guard to pick up.
In situations like those, oftentimes we can depend upon another vhf radio use to act as a broadcast relay. They can relay to the Coast Guard information we can't broadcast successfully.
In this recording, a large passenger ferry with 150 on board has broadcast a mayday call. There's a fire in the engine room.
Their call goes unanswered, at first. But personnel at a dam pick up the call and try relay it to the Coast Guard via channel 16 - that channel we all know as one to use for mayday calls.
As you listen in, you'll hear dam personnel and the Coast Guard vhf watchstander trying to get the facts straight. There's a considerable amount of confusion. The Coast Guard watchstander seems taken aback that the dam control station is calling. The dam personnel caller seems frustrated that he can't get his point across.
There's a lot we as sea kayakers can learn from the recording. Our vhf radios have low watt outputs: from 2.5 to 5.0. Their antennas are small, our kayaks are low to the water. So sometimes reaching the Coast Guard in an emergency can be difficult. Our radios simply don't have the power or height to do the job.
So what's this say to us as kayakers? Maybe someday you'll hear an unanswered mayday or other call on channel 16. Maybe you are the only boat within range to answer and possibly relay the call. Feel free to answer and offer what assistance you can...anything from taking careful note of the caller's position to relay their message to possible. Or even coming to their aid in your own fast and narrow, able craft.
And finally, should your own mayday or other urgency call go unanswered, hope that another nearby boater will break in to pass your message along to whoever needs to receive it.
Case in point. A few years back, while kayaking in the northeast US, the owner of a kayak ramp made it clear to us that if our party didn't return on our stated day from a kayak camping trip, he would notify the Coast Guard that we were overdue. In other words, if we couldn't follow the timetable we stated on our float plan, he'd assume something had gone wrong.
Well, the weather soon turned quite bad -- heavy winds, rain, large breaking waves chop -- and we were pinned down on a windswept island. We were going to be a day or two overdue.
I tried to raise the ramp owner on my vhf. After calling him six or seven times without success, a sailboat several miles distant responded. He offered to provide communications assistance. With a masthead antenna 50 feet above water, his broadcast range was far greater than mine. He raised the ramp owner and relayed our one- or two-day delay message. He also relayed back to me that the ramp owner got our message.
