Capt. William Picken sent out a distress call at 5:46 p.m. His 45-foot clam boat Sea Princess, en route from Marshfield to Hyannis on the Massachusetts coastline June 9th, was taking water into its engine room as it powered along about five miles off Race Point.
The Coast Guard dispatched a 25-foot rescue boat from the station in Provincetown within 9 minutes and arrived at the coordinates by 6:15 p.m.–too late to save Sea Princess, which sank rapidly in about 200 feet of water. All that remained of the vessel was a field of debris. But they did find Picken and his crew mate dressed in survival suits, adrift in their life raft and waiting for help.
The story of the Sea Princess is not unique–the Coast Guard took more than 28,000 distress calls last year–but it offers a window on the emergency process as it moves from Mayday call to rescue. How that process works, and how you can assist it, is something every mariner should know.
Coast GuardA family of six, including a 9 month old, was rescued from the 65-foot vessel Imagination near Miami Beach in May. The Coast Guard Cutter Dolphin responded to the Mayday and rescued the family six minutes before the boat sank in 1,800 feet of water. The Coast Guard’s response to distress calls, which range from life-threatening emergencies to mundane requests for fuel and towing, is dictated by thousands of pages of rules, a constantly-shifting pool of resources and the discretion of the officers in charge.
It also depends on how boaters react to the emergency situations. By following proper Coast Guard procedures and keeping his boat well equipped, Picken was able to assist his own rescue. If the raft hadn't been ready, if the survival suits weren't accessible, if the radio wasn't working or if the men had been unable to give their location accurately, the outcome may have been much different.
Picken could not be reached for comment, but Coast Guard officials called his response a textbook example of how to react.
"If you’re looking for a classic example of what to do in an at-sea emergency, this is it," said Luke Pinneo, a Coast Guard spokesman in Boston. "These guys knew what they were doing and, without hesitation, they enacted their emergency plan and it saved their lives."
IT STARTS WITH A CALL
Most distress calls come in on VHF Channel 16, which has been in operation for decades. More recently, stations equipped with a technology called Rescue 21 have been able to receive mayday signals via Digital Selective Calling, or DSC, which uses the vessel's GPS to transmit its coordinates along with the call.
Calls are taken by "watch standers" in Coast Guard stations around the country, whose job it is to monitor Channel 16. If the vessel is using DSC, they are notified with an audible alarm and a red flashing computer pop-up. If the call is made without DSC, coordinates must be transmitted by the people on the vessel. The watch stander then alerts a Search and Rescue Controller and attempts to hail the vessel on Channel 16.
Glen JusticeCoast Guard rescue decisions are made quickly, tens of thousands of times each year. But they do not always conform to the captain's wishes. In early April, the Coast Guard declined to tow a large wooden ketch off the sea wall in Louisiana's Lake Pontchartrain. The crew was rescued, but the boat was dashed to pieces.
