Backup is good to have. I carry my cellophone in Aquapack soft bag (VHF is waterproof), but it is often down shortly after I leave the shore - no signal. This guy was found somewhere 50 or 60 miles offshore, far beyond a cellophone range (he made a distress call while being closer to the shore). ----- Original Message ----- From: tony ford Subject: Re: [Paddlewise] Just spotted a few seconds of a spot on TV about someone who drifted off of the Hawaiian Islands Interesting this thing about cell phones and marine hand held radios. A group of us, two years ago, were carrying out simulated emergency drills of the North German coast with the local SAR shore based unit - about 2 miles away. We ditched and attempted to call emergency services by marine radio - there were a couple of sand dunes between us and the SAR station and our message was not received. We then alerted the emergency services by cellphone - so cellphones do have their uses. Moral of the story - carry a backup means of communicating. *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:33:35 PDT