Few things come to grate as much on cruiser’s nerves as listening to the incessant chatter on the international VHF hailing and distress frequency, 156.800 Mhz on your FM dial, or channel 16 on marine VHF sets. In many parts of the world, the frequency is used and abused to capacity, with transmissions by users expert and amateur alike crowding it during daylight hours and often well into the evening.
You are forced to endure this by law and custom if you can stand to have the radio on at all; FCC regulations require any vessel with a VHF set turned on (and vessels over 20 meters, or those in commercial use, must leave their VHF on) and not otherwise in use to monitor (or “guard” in radio parlance) channel 16. The reason for this is simple; it dramatically expands the number of stations and coverage to pick up distress calls, VHF being a relatively localized (within line of site, give or take, which generally isn’t over 40 miles at any point on the gentle curve of the ocean) technology. Moreover, since everyone is required to be on the channel, its secondary use as a hailing frequency is almost a given. If you want to contact someone, or vice versa, you know where they will be listening.
The problem generally arises with users forgetting that the channel is only supposed to be used for making initial contact, or for emergencies. Rather than making contact and then switching to a less populated frequency (since 16 is a simplex frequency; only one station can understandably transmit across it at a given time, crowding out anyone else who may need it) they will carry on their extended conversations there, subjecting the rest of us to generally boring drivel and blocking others trying to make contact… or, god forbid, who need help in an actual emergency.
Still, it’s a fascinating snapshot of the world if you have the patience for it. I take a certain arcane pleasure in observing expert users over the air. A Coast Guard officer using the obscure “ordinal” for “degree” when relaying a transmission; a particularly polished securite call from a surveying vessel. Maybe I’m excessively nerdy, but I think those are cool, and I count radio watch as one of the more entertaining aspects of watchkeeping. We’ve overhead two plane crashes, two vessels go down, and any number of minor medical dramas in addition to the more mundane “…the Coast Guard has received a report of an overturned kayak…” calls. It’s just like reality TV!
But unlike reality TV, you have to put up with the mundane in addition to the interesting. My observation has been that usage patterns and expertise vary with locality. In the heavily populated waters of the lower Inside Passage, amateurs dominate, with spurious calls, over-frequent hails, and clumsy techniques that waste air time. On the West Coast of Vancouver Island, and further north up the Inside Passage, more professional use predominates.
It’s a bit hard to define this but you know it when you hear it. Consider this classic example of a hailing call:
“Why Knot, Why Knot, Why Knot, this is Sailaway, Sailaway, Sailaway on channel one six, over.”
“Sailaway, this is Why Knot, over.”
“Why Knot, let’s go to channel six eight, six eight please, over.”
“Sailaway, Why Knot moving to channel six eight, out.”
It’s textbook, right out of Chapman’s, and neither the FCC nor the Coast Guard will call you to account for it. And yet, to ears familiar with the clipped brevity of conversations on disciplined radio nets, it’s maddeningly inefficient. Compare to this:
“Why Knot, Why Knot, Sailaway on one-six, over.”
“Sailaway, Why Knot, go ahead.”
“Go six eight.”
“Six eight, roger.”
Which accomplishes the same end, but takes half the time. Truly familiar users get it down to two lines:
“Why Knot, Why Knot, Sailaway calling, over.”
“Sailaway, six eight.”
And Sailaway might simply acknowledge with two quick mike clicks, if that.
It’s a pleasure sharing the air waves with such considerate and professional users.
On the other hand, few things are more disturbing than overhearing, as I did last summer near the northern tip of Vancouver Island, the voice of a grizzled older gentleman announcing the following:
“Sea King, Sea King, Sea King, this is Boy Toy, Boy Toy.”
Sometimes maybe it’s better to just turn it off.
You could always play SailO. Here are the rules:
Here is a game we play on the boat. It is adapted from Bingo for the cruising and boating community.
Some have asked me to post the SailO rules and a sample card. Here they are:
SailO is a game like bingo. You place beads, pennies, or just about anything that will not fly away over your spot when a word is said over the VHF. You can also get credit for an inference, such as, if you had Radio Check on one of your squares and someone said “can anyone hear me” you would get credit.
What is needed:
Blank cards – we make them up on the computer and they look like this (this one is filled in)
Beans, pennies, or other means of covering the squares
A VHF radio
A busy anchorage
How the game is played:
You write in common phrases said on the VHF into each one of your squares on your card.
Don’t worry if someone copies your phrases just don’t put them in the same positions on the card. You can use boat names, people’s names, or virtually anything that can be heard on the VHF. The order is real important (If you have older kids make them all write down the phrases on slips of paper and then draw them from a hat and fill out the card in the order they are drawn. Otherwise it is likely to be a short game). Once you have the cards filled in you can play as many times as you like with the cards. Just make sure you hand them out at random. You will probably need a new card in a new harbor since the boat names and places will change.
Listen to the VHF and place your pennies over the squares when you hear the word, phrase, or inference. If there is any doubt the Captains Word is law (or we like to think so)!
Usually a prize will help keep kids motivated; e.g., whoever wins SailO – picks the movie tonight, does not have to do dishes, gets the hammock, etc.
You can even play this across multiple boats. The first one to get an entire row, column, or diagonal corner to corner covered goes on the VHF and states their boat name and then calls out SailO. It works particularly well during a radio net (use dual watch on your VHF so you can call SailO on another channel and not interrupt the radio net).
Remember – having fun is what we are out there to do. Don’t let running the boat get in the way of the fun.
Ps. You have to give me credit if you use this game.
That’s awesome, Peter! We might have to use more robust boards, something with Velcro, but I can already imagine this becoming a big hit aboard Insegrevious. It’s tough to find nautically themed board games!