People who are going to get rich pitching EPIRBs and PLBs

by philg

“Two Women, and Their Dogs, Rescued After Nearly 5 Months Lost at Sea” (nytimes):

Jennifer Appel and Tasha Fuiaba were rescued by the Navy vessel the Ashland 900 miles south of Japan, according to a statement released by the Navy on Thursday. After setting out in early May, a storm claimed their 50-foot boat’s engine on May 30. They spent the next five months adrift at sea and unable to make contact with others.

Ms. Appel and Ms. Fuiaba at first believed they could get to their destination using only the boat’s sails. But two months into a journey that ordinarily takes half that long, they began to issue daily distress calls using a high-frequency radio.

An EPIRB manufacturer should try to hire these two (and their dogs?) immediately!

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10 thoughts on “People who are going to get rich pitching EPIRBs and PLBs”

  1. Deeply mystifying. Even if they had lost their rigging, they should have been able to jury rig something to get them in – but the mast looks good and so does the boom and the main sail. I suspect they were “navigationally challenged “. Presumably the dead engine was powering their GPS and they carried no backup and didn’t have even a basic knowledge of compass reading or astronavigation. I feel there is a much more interesting story here.

  2. Shocking they had no PLB (that’s my assumption reading the NYT).. duh.. I backcountry ski and hike (Aaron Ralston, remember him) and carry a small (6 oz unit) unit wherever I go off grid… the new ones transmit GPS coordinates..

    Agree with Ed..

  3. Paul: Why would they need a PLB? Isn’t part of a standard sailboat’s equipment a life raft with a built-in EPIRB? Maybe a PLB as a backup if the batteries haven’t been checked on the raft’s EPIRB? (Aviation life rafts have the automatic deployment EPIRB as an option, but we are weight-limited, the chance of going into the water is minimal, and the chance of going into the water without the rescuers knowing the position is even smaller on a typical flight. People who fly over significant water usually have an EPIRB as part of the raft and then a PLB as a backup.)

  5. They seem to have been very well prepared in terms of food, but incredibly badly prepared in terms of everything else. They started calling for help after 2 months. They were trying to get to Tahiti, so practically due south but ended up south of Japan, so it sounds like they got into the northern equatorial current and just drifted west. The deck brush seems to have gone missing too. Not sure any amount of gadgetry could save people who sail for the southern hemisphere and don’t wonder why the noonday sun stays to the south and the pole star isn’t vanishing.

  6. Phil: Good point, I was unaware of the standard requirements for sailboats, as well as aviation. But a friend of mine has a brother in the SEALs and he says that they have a saying: “2=1, 1=None”. Can’t imagine not having a backup for a trip like this.

    And I just updated my NOAA registration (surprise – a government web site that works well!), and ALWAYS check the unit via tests before I go any on an extended trip.

  7. Something is very fishy about the whole incident. A lot of people are saying that these were just navigationally challenged, spacey women – haha, but I think there is more to it than that. Their whole story doesn’t quite seem to make any sense, which probably means that they are lying in some major ways.

  8. There are still plenty of amateur radio operators who monitor HF, there are established HF networks that monitor yacht traffic.

    http://www.cruiserswiki.org/wiki/World_MM_Nets

    The cost of a SPOT tracker (which I have for my GA and motorcycle trips) is round off error compared to the cost of a long sailing voyage.

    I agree with Jack D. Something is fishy about this.

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