At 07:29 PM 12/1/98 -0800, Dave K wrote: >How about it? Do you leave your VHF on, tuned to 16 (and whatever "call" channel fits your area) >while paddling? Bet you don't. > >I'll collect responses and summarize the results -- no one needs to confess to the Paddlewise throng >they are selfish. I promise to maintain confidentiality. Just email me. > Okay, colour me selfish, but most of the time I leave my VHF off. This partially an aesthetic choice - I don't want to ruin the tranquility I came for - and partially a functional one - I don't have an endless supply of batteries. I could rationalize this by suggesting that any emergency that took place over my horizon (that is, a crisis I might hear about on the VHF that I would not otherwise have known about) I would take so long to get to that my presence would make little difference. There are times I do monitor 16, but again mostly for selfish reasons. If I'm crossing a major traffic lane, I contact Vessel Traffic Services on the appropriate channel to confirm that it's safe to "cross the street" and to advise them of my position and planned course. I then set the scanning on the VHF to flip between the traffic channel and channel 16. Once clear, I sign off with Traffic Services, and turn off the radio. Re:cell phones. Not sure about the US. Here in Canada, in some areas you can hit *16 on a cell phone and be directly connected to the Coast Guard rescue. However the Coast Guard still prefers that you use VHF channel 16 if possible - the idea being that other boats in the immediate vicinity may hear you, speeding up response time and possibly making it unnecessary for the increasingly under funded Coasties to respond at all. Philip T. **************************************** Mountain Equipment Co-op 1655 West 3rd Avenue, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6J 1K1 Tel: 640-732-1989 Fax: 604-731-6483 email: pid_at_mec.ca Visit our website at: http://www.mec.ca ***************************************** *************************************************************************** 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 Wed Dec 02 1998 - 08:54:41 PST
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