BoatUS.com: Government Affairs

March 2008 update:

Rescue 21 Covers North Florida Coast

The northeast coast of Florida is the next region to benefit from the U.S. Coast Guard¹s Rescue 21 roll out. Sector Jacksonville was set to go live in January, although final acceptance of the system by the Coast Guard is not necessarily immediate. The new distress communications system will cover 40,000 square miles of ocean and inland waters, along 190 miles of coastline from King's Bay, GA, to Port Malabar, FL, including 10 inlets. Also covered are 248 miles of the ICW in Florida and 161 miles of the St. John¹s River.

Rescue 21 is a huge improvement to the Coast Guard¹s search and rescue capability with stronger VHF marine radio signals, direction-finding capabilities, tracking of ships and aircraft and better communications with state and local first-responders.

For boaters, the new system gives the Coast Guard the ability to pin-point the location of a distress call from a DSC-VHF marine radio connected to a GPS receiver. Coast Guard watchstanders will receive a DSC distress call with an encoded signal showing the identity of the caller and their position, which will also serve to reduce hoax mayday calls.

Other sectors already using Rescue 21 include New York, Long Island Sound, Delaware Bay, Seattle-Port Angeles, WA, New Orleans, Clearwater, FL, to Mobile, AL, and Atlantic City, NJ-Eastern Shore, VA (see map). Scheduled to next be finished are Miami, Hampton Roads, VA, Baltimore, Portland, OR, and Houston in 2008.

Boaters can get ready for Rescue 21 by upgrading to a DSC-capable VHF marine radio and obtaining a free identity number, called an MMSI, and entering it into their radio, as well as connecting the radio to a GPS receiver. For boaters staying within U.S. boundaries, an MMSI is free from BoatU.S. Go to BoatUS.com/MMSI for an online registration or to download the form. Also on the site is a free tutorial, "Can You Hear Me?" to educate boaters on the use of DSC radios.

September 2007 update:

Two More Rescue 21 Sectors To Go Live

Two major waterways that carry substantial recreational, as well as commercial, boating traffic will soon benefit from the U.S. Coast Guard¹s Rescue 21 technology. Two new sectors ‹ Delaware Bay and Long Island Sound ‹ are scheduled to begin testing in September and October, respectively. If both systems meet with agency approval, the Coast Guard could go live with Delaware Bay in November and Long Island Sound in December.

Rescue 21 is a huge improvement to the Coast Guard’s search and rescue capabilities, which were dramatically displayed during Hurricane Katrina when the Coast Guard rescued 33,000 people. The two new stations will have far superior radio signals and coverage, direction-finding capability, tracking of ships and aircraft, as well as better communications with local and state first-responders and other state and federal agencies. For boaters, the two stations have the ability to pin-point the location of a distress call from a DSC VHF radio interfaced with a GPS receiver. Coast Guard watchstanders will be able to receive a mayday call automatically encoded with the sender’s identity and their GPS position.

Sector Long Island Sound covers the coastline and some inland waters of Connecticut, nearly all of Long Island and offshore up to 200 nm out. Sector Delaware Bay covers about two-thirds of Pennsylvania waters and about half of New Jersey, including the Delaware River, Delaware Bay and the Atlantic coast of New Jersey and northern Delaware, also extending offshore about 200 miles.

Rescue 21 was first deployed in Atlantic City, NJ, covering the coast south to Chincoteague, VA. Next came the Gulf Coast which covers Clearwater, FL, to Mobile, AL; last year it went live in the Pacific Northwest from Port Angeles to Seattle, WA. The Coast Guard is preparing multiple sectors around the country simultaneously so the pace should pick up. The entire U.S. is expected to be covered by 2011.

Recreational boaters can get ready to use Rescue 21 now by upgrading to a DSCcapable VHF marine radio and applying for a free radio ID number, called an MMSI, from BoatUS Registrations for MMSIs are available online at BoatUS.com/mmsi. Also at this site is a free DSC radio tutorial called “Can You Hear Me?” from the BoatUS Foundation to help boaters become familiar with the new technology.

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September 2006

Not a moment too soon for the 2006 hurricane season, the U. S. Coast Guard’s state-of-the-art communications upgrade, Rescue 21, has arrived on the Gulf Coast.

The much anticipated and much delayed overhaul of the nation’s coastal distress communications system became operational at the end of June at two major Gulf of Mexico Coast Guard stations — St. Petersburg, FL, and Mobile, AL. Between these two stations, hundreds of square miles of the Gulf Coast in Florida, Mississippi and Alabama now have superior VHF marine radio coverage as well as digital selective calling (DSC) for mayday calls.

With forecasts of up to 10 hurricanes along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts this season, Rescue 21 is a significant improvement to the Coast Guard’s search and rescue capabilities, which were dramatically displayed during Hurricane Katrina last year when the Coast Guard rescued 33,000 storm victims. Hopefully, there will be no repeat, but if there is, the two newly activated stations have far superior radio signals and coverage, direction-finding capability, tracking of ships and aircraft, as well as better communications with local and state first-responders and other federal agencies. For boaters, the two stations have the ability to pin-point a distress call from a boat with a DSC radio.

“Rescue 21 has become operational at an especially critical time of the year in the Gulf states,” said Capt. Dan Abel, Coast Guard project manager for Rescue 21. “It provides vital technology to increase the capabilities of our Coast Guard crews at a time when the summer search and rescue pace increases and tropical storms or hurricanes put mariners and coastal residents at risk.”

For vessels equipped with DSC VHF marine radios that have been registered and are connected to the boat’s GPS receiver, Rescue 21 takes the search out of search and rescue. Coast Guard watchstanders can receive a mayday call encoded with the sender’s identity and GPS position.

As the new equipment was switched on in St. Petersburg, seven distress calls were picked up the first day that were not heard on the old radio equipment, said Coast Guard LTJG Travis Gracewski.

Rescue 21 will also serve to reduce hoax distress calls because the caller’s identity automatically transmits on a DSC radio. Hoax calls cost U.S. taxpayers millions each year in unnecessary responses by Coast Guard units as well as put rescue crews at risk (see box).

Another Rescue 21 component proved itself indispensable during Hurricane Katrina last year when the New Orleans Coast Guard station’s radio towers were destroyed and all marine communications were lost at a critical time. A component of Rescue 21 is a fully autonomous mobile radio tower and station which, until then, had been untried in real disasters. It was designed as a back-up system to coastal Rescue 21 stations such as St. Petersburg or Mobile should they be damaged.

The mobile Disaster Recovery System was rushed to Louisiana where it performed as promised and quickly restored marine communications to the region for six months. As part of the new Gulf system, four mobile systems are ready in Huntsville, AL, should they be needed.

The next locations to come on line with Rescue 21 toward the end of this year are Seattle and Port Angeles, WA. Installation was expected to be completed in late summer followed by testing.

Although the entire project to replace antiquated 1970s radio systems has suffered delays of up to 19 months, multiple regions are now being worked on simultaneously as the Coast Guard plans to first activate the East and West coasts and further around the Gulf of Mexico to Galveston, TX. The New York area, Oregon coast, south Florida and Chesapeake Bay are among the regions currently being installed with Rescue 21 equipment, Gracewski said (see map with updated schedule).

The $730-million program is the second biggest acquisition project at the Coast Guard and was stalled by software and other technical problems in its development. General Dynamics is the contractor for the work, with a host of subcontractors. Difficulty in finding suitable or adequate space on radio towers has also delayed implementation in some areas. If a tower can’t be leased, the Coast Guard has to build one and permits have proven to be a lengthy process.

As Tropical Storm Alberto was bearing down on Florida in June, an already busy Coast Guard wasted two days and $347,000 searching for a boat in distress — only to find nothing. The call was a hoax and the caller, a Boynton Beach man, was arrested and is facing federal charges, big fines and up to 10 years in jail. The June 11 call said a 33-foot boat was taking on water and there were nine people on board including four children. The Coast Guard sent two aircraft, two helicopters and two vessels to search 1,000 square miles from Boynton Beach to St. Lucie Inlet. When nothing came up, officials became suspicious. Since all calls are recorded, it was re-played on local television and a viewer recognized the voice and called authorities. The 45-year-old suspect is unemployed but does own a powerboat. In addition to a $250,000 fine he could be ordered to repay the Coast Guard the cost of the search.

The Coast Guard gets 100-200 phony calls each year which not only waste time and money but could divert rescue crews from a real emergency. The U.S. Attorney’s Office decided to throw the book at the suspect in this case as a warning to others that hoax calls are no joke.

DSC, MMSI, VHF … For anyone struggling with the alphabet soup that has flourished around the latest advances in marine radios, deciphering help is finally at hand.

The BoatUS Foundation for Boating Safety and Clean Water has unveiled a new marine VHF radio tutorial that any boater can take via the Internet to learn all the basics of using today’s radio models. Funded by a boating safety grant from the U.S. Coast Guard, the Web-based learning program is available to anyone free of charge.

Beta-tested over the summer, “Can You Hear Me?” as the tutorial is titled, is an interactive run-down of everything a boater wants to know about using a marine VHF radio with Digital Selective Calling (DSC) but was afraid to ask. In an outline format, the 35-minute narrated program covers all of the basics and even allows viewers to try various radio buttons and sounds on their computer to simulate how a DSC radio would operate.

Topics covered include: emergency signaling; the advent of Rescue 21; marine VHF radio; the digital selective calling (DSC) radio; equipping your boat with a VHF-DSC radio; installing a VHF-DSC radio; emergency and routine VHF-DSC operation.

No special computer program is needed to view the seven-part tutorial, just access to the Internet; it runs on a PC or Macintosh. A viewer can stop the tutorial at any point and return to the same spot later on.

“Since so much of the new marine electronics technology has become a bit daunting to boaters, we opted for a streamlined approach that people could easily follow by both reading and listening to the narration as they absorbed all this new information,” said Chris Edmonston, director of boating safety programs for the BoatUS Foundation. “For those familiar with some of the topics, the program lets you skip around from chapter to chapter simply by clicking on the screen, similar to playing an online video.”

While the majority of fixed-mount marine VHF radios on the market today have the DSC feature (less so for handhelds) most owners have not registered in order to get a unique calling number, called an MMSI. The tutorial covers this process, which is free through BoatUS, as well as the often confusing issue of how to test the radio without setting off a false distress call.

In May, the Foundation received a follow-on grant to put the tutorial on a compact disk (CD) for further distribution and to develop an online radio simulator which will feature the front of a radio that the viewer can “play” to try out all its features and hear how it will sound. The Foundation is working with several radio manufacturers who may package the CDs with their new models and the simulator may be out by the end of the year.

“As with any new technology, there is a learning curve and a comfort level the boating public has to reach in order to make effective use of the equipment for safety purposes,” said Edmonston. “While there are manuals and guidebooks out on the same topics, the Internet gets this information out to the public in the most cost effective way.”

The new tutorial is expected to be live at BoatUS.com/mmsi by early September. At the same site is information on obtaining an MMSI number and both an online or printable registration form.