equipment

Sheesh, I take a few months off in the sunny Bahamas and now I’m playing catch-up. I just found out about the new collaboration between BOAT/US and Spot Satellite Personal Tracker. It’s called SPOT Assist Maritime. The cut & paste:

Works Where Cell Phones and VHF Radio Don’t
SPOT sends your messages and GPS locations over communications satellites so you can be located quickly. SPOT can send your message and locations to others, communicating in near real time with the push of a single button- no bluetooth technology or complicated programming required. Now you can easily link your BoatUS membership directly to SPOT.

Spot seems more of a novelty than anything else; a gadget for gadget freeks who gotta have everything. I’m sure that true adventurers would have a legitimate use for a Spot. Surely, it provides peace of mind to those back home wondering if you’re alright, but for the traditional marine assistance customer who rarely gets out of VHF range, it would be merely a back up to their primary means to summon help. I worry though that this is another technology that detracts from our desire to encourage all emergency communications to remain on VHF, where the whole world can hear, and render assistance if needed.

The annual subscription fee for the Spot service might be a barrier to widespread adoption. I have a Personal EPIRB that requires no annual fees, and I know it will get the USCG’s attention if I set it off.

If you thought the privacy of cell phone communications was bad, this will be worse. Spot is a one way communication device, which means that if a boater does hit the help button, those of us who have to go out to help have no idea what is wrong, what is needed, or even what kind of boat we are looking for. All we know are two facts: a)someone hit the help button, and b) their GPS position. Pretty scanty info to launch on, eh? Do you send your biggest boat, or fastest boat? Do you bring 20 gallons of gas, in case the guy is only out of gas? Is he on his brother’s 50′ sailboat, even though his membership is for a 24′ runabout? I think the one way communication is probably the weakest part of the idea. On the other hand, if you are really broken down out with no other means to communicate, Spot could save your life. I’m thinking of those poor football players in Florida, who were way offshore. One of these may have saved some lives in that instance.

In that scenario, I would hope that it was the 911 button getting pushed because it was an emergency, in which case us private sector guys aren’t worried about which asset to launch or what level of membership or what kind of boat… the public rescue authorities will be launching everything to go look and save. They may not be any happier about the one-wayness of the request than we would be, but they don’t have to worry about getting paid.

So, Spot will be a good back-up, and useful in real emergencies, but I sure hope folks don’t begin to adopt this kind of technology as their primary means of calling a towboat.