Make sure your PLB and EPIRB registrations are up to date

Help us to help you! Please make sure that your personal locator beacon (PLB) and/or emergency positioning indication radio beacon (EPIRB) registrations are up to date.

Indeed, now could be as good a time as any for some admin work and to check that your information is up to date. Register, for free, click here.

We remind you of this in light of an incident we attended to on 4 May, which involved a search for a 9m sailing vessel after an EPIRB was activated near Teignmouth.

The HM Coastguard helicopter from St Athan, Exmouth and Teignmouth Coastguard Rescue Teams, Exmouth and Teignmouth lifeboats, and Avon and Somerset Police were all sent to search for the vessel from just before 2pm to past 8.30pm.

The EPIRB had been registered but the owner’s contact details were out of date as the associated vessel had been sold on several times.

All of the subsequent owners of the vessel were contacted and, thankfully, the current owner was found safe and well on land and the vessel was moored safely in a marina.

However, the EPIRB was no longer with the vessel. A decision was subsequently made to stand down following a thorough search.


Phil Norman, Duty Controller for HM Coastguard, said: “When an emergency beacon is activated we have to assume the worst, that a vessel is in difficulty and people are in need of urgent help.

“The search involved a significant amount of resources, not only Coastguard assets but police ones too. If the emergency beacon had the most recent owner’s contact details, or if it had been disposed of correctly this could have easily been avoided.

“PLBs and EPIRBs are a really effective tool in an emergency, but even more so if they are registered, so help us to help you, and register today.”

Popular posts from this blog

Label your kit at the coast

Image
Kayaks. Canoes. Paddleboards. What do they all have in common? They’re quite often found on the coastline or drifting out to sea. And if we don’t know who they belong to, we can spend time searching for an owner when they’re home safe and sound. So please help us to help you. Label your kit so that if you do get separated from it, and it turns up somewhere, we can get hold of you. In recent weeks, our Coastguard Rescue Teams have found numerous items such as kayaks and canoes drifting out at sea or abandoned near the shoreline. Unfortunately, some of the items we have found have not had their owners’ contact details written on them nor been reported as missing to the Coastguard. As a result, it makes it difficult for us to find out who it belongs to and also means we can never be completely sure if someone is safe or in the worst case, in trouble at sea. This can place a huge strain on our resources especially during the busy summer period when we have to call upon our Coastgua
Read more

A short history of HM Coastguard

Image
Today HM Coastguard is a world leader in maritime search and rescue. Looking back almost 200 years, the goods, which now travel by road, were carried by hundreds of small ships. Year in year out dozens of ships and hundreds of lives were lost within sight of the coast. Public shock and dismay at the tragedies drove forward the creation of national life saving organisations. Though it’s beginnings lie in those decades HM Coastguard originated not to meet the dangers of the seas but to combat a threat to the country’s economy and security – smuggling. As soon as medieval taxes were charged on imports and exports, people began smuggling. By 1743 th e estimate was that half the tea drunk in Britain was illegally imported and shows that smuggling was highly profitable. Smugglers have often been romanticised but the reality was brutal. Local people lived in fear, with violent reprisals on informers and the murder of revenue officers, while corruption enabled smugglers to evade harsh p
Read more

BOSCASTLE FLOODS: TEN YEARS ON

Image
Boscastle Flooding 16 th August 2004 The storms of Monday 16 August 2004 saw three weeks worth of rain fall in one day. The resulting water began to be funnelled down the valleys surrounding Boscastle and soon the steep roads became rivers. By the time that the water reached the picturesque village, it had picked up enough momentum to become a raging torrent, sweeping into buildings, washing cars away and felling huge trees. Graham King runs the Witches Museum in Boscastle and was also the station officer for the Boscastle Coastguard Rescue Team at the time of the floods: “ My museum is situated next to the harbour near the river ,” says Graham “ and I can see the coastguard equipment store from there. Initially I was concerned that the vehicle and equipment were going to become stranded but I soon began to realise how quickly the situation was deteriorating and called Falmouth Coastguard ” From that point on the villagers and tourists stranded in flood waters were he
Read more