R. Walker wrote: > > > It did raise the question though-when is it time to call for help? > > This is a good question, and has been bugging me for a while. Is > the Coast Guard there to save lives, or to save us from spending an > inconvenient night on the water or on some unplanned beach? > Frankly, I don't want to be "rescued" from situations that aren't > life threatening. If it takes me an extra day to extricate myself > from a problem, then thats the way it is, so I'll be late and a bit > hungry. Been following this thread with some interest. There certainly is a temptation to Mayday the CG if you have a VHF handy. OTOH, the same VHF is equally useful in hitting a CG repeater to let them know you DON'T need a rescue, and are doing fine, thank you. In my paddling area, the most likely reason I would not be able to get home is that I'm sitting under a tarp comfortably warming myself by a huge fire, as a storm makes the Bay too rough to paddle. 'Course, the folks at home don't know that, so when darkness rolls around, they will call the CG with the info on my float plan, and the CG will probably launch a helo to look for me ... UNLESS I've managed to tell them I'm fine. Frankly, I bought my first VHF expressly for that purpose: so the CG did not needlessly launch a SAR operation. BTW, the Canadian CG requests that paddlers file float plans with them (which I have done a couple times), and if you fail to return, they WILL come looking for you, after they become pretty certain you truly are missing. Good system, except that if you are out for a 2-week trip and get wrecked on day 2, nobody will come looking until day 15 or thereabouts, making for a rather broad search area. Or, so I had imagined, anyway, until I heard a paddler on the VHF filing a PROGRESS REPORT to the local Can CG to update his (previously filed) float plan! What a great idea ... don't think the US CG has the resources to deal with float plans down here. Wonder what the Canadians are doing differently which allows their CG to monitor paddlers so much better? -- Dave Kruger Astoria, OR *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************Received on Fri Sep 25 1998 - 17:14:18 PDT
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