If you've ever had to call the Coast Guard, you know that the nation's oldest sea service is ready to do whatever it takes to rescue you – from dispatching fast-response boats and helicopters to lowering rescue-swimmers into heavy seas to pluck you from the water.

Assuming they can find you, that is.

For Coasties, locating boaters who are in distress is often the toughest part of search-and-rescue operations. Many boaters don't know where they are when they get into trouble, don't have marine radios or don't know how to use them. Those who abandon ship can get swept away by strong currents. Finding you can take hours of searching by aircraft or patrol boats – and sometimes that's too long.

This year the Coast Guard is equipping its shore stations with a new state-of-the-art communications system called Rescue 21. It can detect even faint SOS calls more effectively and use them to pinpoint the location of boaters immediately, enabling rescue crews and helicopters to reach them more quickly.

"Rescue 21 is helping the Coast Guard take the 'search' out of 'search and rescue,'" says Admiral Thad Allen, the Service's commandant. He calls it "a quantum leap forward in command, control and communications" that will cut the Coast Guard's response-time in rescue cases, save more lives and reduce the risk to Coasties themselves.

A LARGE INVESTMENT

The $550 million direction-finding and communications system, which will replace the outmoded equipment that has been in place since the 1970s, is now operating in 12 of the Coast Guard's 35 sectors, covering 15,745 miles of coastline, navigable rivers and waterways in the continental U.S., Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico and Guam.

US COAST GUARDThe Rescue 21 system relies on large towers to increase the Coast Guard's reach.