What if Austin Stephanos and Perry Cohen had been equipped with an EPIRB or PLBs ? Would that have made a difference in the search and rescue? The odds are likely, that it would have. Neglecting boating safety is no joke and can be tragic.
No one ever believes something will happen to them while on the water. Let’s be real, how many times have you been off-shore and came back safe and sound, sometimes under the worst conditions? Be honest, how many times have you tempted fate? Looked up and said “Eh, that’ll blow over”. We all have stories about “that one time”.
Seriously, your boat will only capsize one time, right. Maybe you’ll be lucky and you won’t be on it when it does. If the tragic loss of two young boys, experienced boater by all accounts, teaches us nothing other than everyone should take boating safety more seriously, I’m okay with that.
EPIRB stands for Emergency Position Indicating Radion Beacon. EPIRBs provide Search and Rescue forces with your location either via GPS data if your EPIRB is equipped with a GPS receiver, or via triangulation from the low earth orbiting satellites. This positional data is provided to the Rescue Coordination Center closest to your location. Unlike Austin and Perry’s search efforts that extended from the Carolina’s to Miami, and EPIRB narrow that area. An EPIRB equipped boat will most assuredly be found much quicker than one without. An EPIRB gives search and rescue a more accurate starting point to search for people who may not be with the boat any longer.
There is very little difference between an EPIRB and a PLB, Personal Location Beacon, with the exception that the PLB is smaller and is intended to be worn ON a registered individual, rather than a boat. The principle is the same. The signals transmitted are the same. Perhaps the difference is that the cargo a PLB is attached to is far more precious than the vessel carrying it.
If you have children that go boating, either with you or on their own, we would like to offer you special pricing on ACR Personal Locator Beacons. This is an unadvertised price and not through j-tekmarine.com.