[Paddlewise] Coast Guard & Mayday (Distress) Calls

FYI:
> Tuesday January 26 9:10 PM ET 
> 
> Coast Guard Recommend Mayday Change
> 
> By BRUCE SMITH Associated Press Writer 
> 
> CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) - Coast Guard investigators recommended Tuesday that all mayday
> calls be considered legitimate until thoroughly checked.
> 
> The recommendation follows a 1997 sinking of a sailboat that claimed four lives. A radio distress
> call from the stricken vessel and a subsequent report of voices in the water did not prompt a Coast
> Guard search.
> 
> Tuesday's report from investigators looking into the sinking of the 34-foot Morning Dew released
> came a week before the National Transportation Safety Board holds hearings into the wreck.
> 
> Following the report, Commandant James Loy has ordered a review of U.S. Coast Guard rules on
> responding to distress calls.
> 
> The NTSB is also looking into the whether the Coast Guard botched the handling of a distress call
> from the clamming boat Adriatic, which went down off Barnegat, N.J., last week. The crewman are
> presumed dead.
> 
> In that case, the Coast Guard said the mayday message was unintelligible and did not contain enough
> information to launch a search.
> 
> The Coast Guard receives many false distress calls from mariners. But the report recommended the
> agency consider all mayday broadcasts legitimate until proven otherwise.
> 
> That's not what happened when the Morning Dew sank on a Charleston Harbor jetty on Dec. 29,
> 1997, killing Michael Wayne Cornett, 49, his sons Paul, 16, and Daniel, 14, and nephew Bobby
> Lee Hurd, 14
> 
> The vessel went down in rough weather.
> 
> The Morning Dew radioed a brief distress message at 2:17 a.m. The Coast Guard tried three times
> to radio back but got no response. No search was launched because there was not enough
> information about the vessel's location.
> 
> About four hours later, a crewman on a passing ship reported calls for help from the water. A
> harbor pilot boat searched, but the Coast Guard did not.
> 
> The officer on watch who received the radio message said he did not hear the word ``mayday.''
> 
> The Coast Guard got involved when the wreck was seen on the jetty after daylight.
> 
> The report recommended ``search planners must engage in aggressive detective work'' if they can't
> tell where a signal is coming from.
> 
> An urgent broadcast should be made to all vessels, not just a callback to the vessel that radioed.
> And officers must replay the tape of the distress call, something not immediately done in the Morning
> Dew case.
> 
> If a message is thought to be fraudulent, the tape must be replayed for a superior officer and then the
> district command center. If all agree the call is false, no other action is required, the report
> recommended.
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