Search And Rescue Signals and Getting Adrift Sailboats Back To Their Owners

[keepitsimple]

I'm new to radio forums and to ham radio in general and I'm not sure if I'm even asking the right question, let alone in the right forum.

I'm a sailor. Love sailboats and just about everything to do with them. I think there is something that can be done when a sailboat goes adrift after the coast guard rescues the crew. For instance, after the "perfect storm", the sailboat portrayed in the movie washed up on the NJ coast, and was put back into service for little cost by the owner. Most such stories don't have that good an ending. I want to change that. I'm putting together a team to go out and rescue sailboats for their owners. Most in the sailing community think there's little return-on-investment for such a venture. It takes a lot to go far and bring a boat back. I'm committed to it anyway.

There are many pieces to put in place, one of them is being able to hear when a ship is in distress. The advent of EPIRB emergency beacons with integrated GPS helps. I need to know when an EPIRB call goes out, so I can assemble the team and equipment and go get the sailboat once it's safe to do so.

How would you go about receiving the EPIRB signals? I'm focusing mainly on the East coast of the US, until such time that we can grow the service.

For those who can already receive these signals, does this effort interest you?

 

[keepitsimple]

Must be a quiet day.

 

[rvictor]

You may want to repost in the Marine Monitoring Forum since people there have more interest in and experience with this sort of thing.

I looked up EPIRBs in Wikipedia since your post stirred my curiosity. Doesn't sound like there's much info actually contained in the data other than identification and rough location. I would think you'd be better off monitoring the standard marine radio channels for distress calls where you could get some idea of what was going on and whether the ship was abandoned as part of the rescue as opposed to being towed, etc.

73,
Dick

 

[keepitsimple]

Thanks Dick, I'll repost it in the marine area.

 

[kb2vxa]

Yeah, catch heck for duplicate posts across forums when you can ask to have it moved.