Could DSC have Prevented the Lightship Race Tragedy?
As many of you have read here and elsewhere, we lost two San Francisco sailors during last weekend's Lightship Race. There has been a lot of discussion, of course, regarding what exactly happened, and how it could have been prevented. All we know is that there was no distress call, no EPIRB, nor anything else to signal the sinking of the vessel in waters known to be treacherous.
A couple of good suggestions that have been made to prevent this in the future are that racing boats either be required to have automatic-release-and-activation EPIRBS, or that races require transponders or transmitters be installed on boats that will send the lat-lon of each vessel to the race committee. Since both of these are costly solutions, it's not terribly likely that they will be adopted quickly by the weekend racer. Which is why we've tried to come up with a better solution.
Nearly every VHF radio produced in the past several years is capable of DSC – which stands for Digital Selective Calling. It's much more than the red button on the face of your radio. It is a fairly advanced digital radio system that can do a lot of things you may not know about, including saving lives. All that's required is that mariners and race committees learn and apply this technology, and in doing so they may help avoid future tragedies of this type.
The simple solution is a properly installed DSC VHF radio. This includes connecting the radio to a GPS, obtaining and entering the MMSI number (which is like a phone number for your boat), and setting the DSC functions correctly. It's truly that easy.
Connecting the GPS is generally as simple as either buying a connector, or baring a couple of wires, twisting and/or soldering the radio wires to these, and applying liquid electrical tape or some other protective insulation. This is not rocket science! If you're having a professional come do this, line up some other things you need looked over, because she or he will not be using up their minimum charge on this alone.
To obtain the MMSI number very simply, you can visit here. It's free, and it adds a lot of vessel safety for very little effort. Your owner's manual will have instructions on how to enter this number, and how to enable the different functions. After setting this up, the red button on the front of your radio will, when pushed, send out your location in an automated MAYDAY. It's a very good thing.
Of course, we assume that the crew of DAISY had no time to send out a distress call – probably not enough time to even push the automatic distress button. So, what is required is a failsafe solution, and luckily this is built in to most radios as well. It's just not being used that way yet.
See, another feature of DSC is the POSITION REQUEST. This can usually be set to automatically reply, meaning that someone can enter your MMSI number, request your position, and your radio will immediately reply with your GPS coordinates. Get it? It's a digital transponder! And it's already aboard almost every boat.
What we envision is this: racing boats are required to have properly set-up radios (and GPS's), register their MMSI numbers, and set the POSITION REQUEST to automatically reply (during the race at least). The race committee can assign a radio officer, who makes position requests (called POLLING) of each boat in the race at regular intervals (this requires a slightly better radio than the budget models). If a boat doesn't reply to a couple of consecutive requests, a voice hail is made, other racers are asked for visual confirmation, and if necessary rescue efforts can start immediately - hours sooner than when waiting for a boat not to show up.
Obviously, this needs some real-world testing. But, if there's a chance of responding hours sooner, when minutes can make all the difference, and at a negligible cost to racers and clubs alike - why wouldn't we try this?
Sailing Photos of the 2008 Doublehanded Lightship Race by Peter Lyons of lyonsimaging.com
Photos of the 2008 Doublehanded Lightship Race by Peter Lyons.
Submitted By Salty Dog on 23 Mar
DSC, VHF, Lightship race, Boat Safety, radio, boats, boat, vhf radios, boating, boating safety, sailboats, sailboat racing
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DSC useful, but not a complete answer
The St Francis Yacht Club uses DSC on all race committee boats to accurately position in-the-Bay race marks. It generally works well, but is too easily easily defeated if the GPS is (accidentally) turned off or disconnected. I'd prefer VHF with integral GPS (e.g., Standard Horizon HX850S, Uniden UM-525BK, Uniden Mystic VHF/GPS Mapping Marine Radio), but such units are uncommon and expensive.
A big problem with DSC is that some of our ocean races are out of reliable VHF range, and of course Daisy was lost even with a VHF on board. Another problem is the cost objection to upgrading all VHF radios to DSC and connecting to GPS, as compared to EPIRB or PLB (purchase or rental). Nonetheless I think it's a good suggestion. I'll forward it to OYRA(YRA) myself, and urge others to do the same.
I personally like the idea of EPIRB being rented by YRA as a first step toward making EPIRB mandatory for offshore racing.
--
John Navas
http://sail.navas.us
White Paper?
I spoke with Standard Horizon's V.P. of their Marine Division yesterday about this specifically, and came away very encouraged. If there's interest, I think we could get a white paper together in fairly short order, with basic instructions for the clubs and coordinators.
To be clear to everybody reading this, and as John points out: In no way does this replace an EPIRB. A properly equipped offshore yacht will have both an EPIRB and a properly set up DSC VHF, and the entire crew will know how and when to use these and all other pieces of safety equipment.
RTFM
A number of people, even some local journalists, seem to be confused as to what I've proposed in this article. To again clarify: we're not talking about the red button. We're talking about the ability to automatically send position reports, and to even plot these on a chart in REAL TIME. Think of it as a poor man's AIS system, which, by the way, is also restricted by VHF line-of-site.
This capability is built into the DSC radios already aboard most boats, and is simply a matter of proper set-up. It is a “right now” solution. Of course, so are tethers and hatch-boards, which are also aboard most boats, also require very little preparation to prevent tragedy, and are similarly ignored for the sake of convenience.
NaCl-K9
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