Just Another Saturday Night Talking to the Coast Guard

We all have things we avoid. Sometimes they nearly poke us in the eye.

Today is the first in a long while that I have not woken up feeling remiss. Months ago I spent a small fortune on two pieces of safety equipment for an upcoming sailing trip but was paralyzed about how to set them up. Today, with a friend’s help, it’s all operational.

Sailing offshore, hundreds of miles out, leaves mariners somewhat on their own when it comes to safety. If you get swept off the boat, you want the best equipment in order to stay alive and get rescued. Buying an offshore personal floatation device, or PFD, is step one of that process. The very best are expensive, but it’s insurance.

Like a lot of other people in my position, I now own a small inventory of PFDs. The first was too hot and encumbering for summer racing; it got replaced by a lightweight auto-inflating version. Next came an offshore PFD, with D-rings for a tether. It had shortcomings, so I traded up for a Spinlock Deckvest with a couture price tag.

After that an engineer acquaintance recommended a rescueME MOB1. When deployed, it emits a GPS signal to a satellite and notifies the crew and the Coast Guard of an overboard emergency. I understood the concept and ordered one. Both items arrived by post and sat unopened in their shipping boxes. The expense and worry that I would not be able to figure how to use them weighed me down.

I don’t like failure, so I opt for avoidance.

I’m an Olympian Avoider.

Eventually I unboxed both the Spinlock vest and the MOB1. The two couldn’t have been more different. The heft and design of the former was unlike any other PFD I owned. The MOB1 was a fragile looking piece of plastic that fit in my hand and came with a flimsy pamphlet and several plastic pieces and tethers that rolled around in the small box they came in.

I didn’t want this box of plastic.

I wanted chocolate.

At one point I finally scissored off the Spinlock’s tags and packed the vest for an offshore passage to Newport. I brought the MOB1 along, proud that I programmed in the Maritime Mobile Service Identity, MMSI, number of the vessel we were aboard. That’s as far as I got. For the next three days offshore, the MOB1 remained on my berth below deck. I was afraid to unzip the vest because I wasn’t sure I could repack it, never mind assemble the MOB1 and install it in the vest.

At home I occasionally pulled the MOB1 box off the shelf and watched videos to try to figure it out, but I failed to make progress because I was scared that I would make a mistake, which is exactly what I ended up doing.

With only days remaining prior to a 1700-mile offshore trip, I swallowed my pride and called a friend who is a professional sail repairer. Earlier in the summer she had helped me wrestle the Spinlock’s double-sided zipper. She was now game to help arm the MOB1 and install it in my PFD.

We ordered takeout and started watching videos and reading directions.

We pushed the red plastic alarm component into its correct position. The next step was to push grey slider to the right. Little did we suspect that this is where the mayhem would commence.

The stream of foul language that burst out of mouth was no surprise, but what practically knocked both of us off my new dining room chairs was the violence of the metal antenna that burst forth from the device. Had it been longer and had I not been wearing glasses, it may have taken out my left eye.

The eyeglasses did not prevent me from contemplating other sources of blindness, however, as a relentlessly blinking light emanated from the device. Was it a laser? I knew we shouldn’t look at it.

The only thing lacking in the scene was a screaming siren, but my brain cells provided the equivalent of that as my cortisol levels skyrocketed. Not only had we armed the device, we had activated it at exactly the time when the burger and souvlaki were ready for pick up at the diner down the street.

What should we do? I asked my friend.

She’s probably my friend for many reasons, not the least of which is because of what she said next.

Let’s get the food. Otherwise, we’ll be distracted.

No argument from me.

One of few non-plastic pieces in the MOB1 kit was a black rubber component with a hole that fitted over the blinding ray, and a button that would, fingers crossed, shut off the signal beaming through the roof up toward a roving satellite notifying the Coast Guard that I needed rescue.

I didn’t need rescue. I needed food.

We drove to the strip mall, then cleared the vest, the device, and all its plastic components and instructions off the dining table.

After dinner my friend studied the instruction pamphlet. We rewound the metal antenna back into the MOB1. It took two pair of hands to perform what felt like surgery at this point.

Do you think if I should call the Coast Guard?

At this point my friend was so deeply vested in the operation that had I suggested calling God Himself, she would not have objected.

I feel like that’s the responsible thing to do, I explained.

Anybody who’s tuned into Channel 16, on a VHF radio, which is mandatory for mariners to monitor, knows that the U.S. Coast Guard does a masterful job rescuing boaters in distress. The last thing I wanted was for the Coast Guard to be looking for me when I had accidentally set off my MOB1 in my dining room.

A couple of phone calls later, I reached the appropriate authority, the Coast Guard in Baltimore, who took down all my details, including my street address. (To bill me for a search and rescue operation?) The Baltimore Coast Guard officer thanked me for calling, and I thanked him for his service.

Eventually we understood each plastic part’s function on the MOB1. Two attempt in, I successfully inputted the MMSI number of the vessel I will sail to Antigua on. After that, we were ready to install the device inside the Spinlock, where it now rests harnessed onto the manual inflation tube secured somewhere inside the vest by a very thin plastic string secured with a tiny square knot.

Oh, what a feeling.