I went to the SFYC this evening along with about 500 other people for an event surrounding the loss of 5 people from Low Speed Chase. It was a sad event and it has made everyone in the sailing community pause for thought whether or not the missing and deceased were friends. After leaving the club I came home and I went online to update my Personal Locator Beacon information which was out of date since I have been away and it was sitting in my garage. I also did the monthly test. I am going to set up a system to update my friends and family of what events and boats I am sailing on. I have always provide a lot of information when sailing across the ocean but not when it comes to coastal events or inshore regattas. One of the lessons from this incident was that the emergency contact details given to the coastguard should be someone who is not on the race on another boat as was the case in this instence.

I thought I would share with you all what I take offshore…
1) I wear a Spinlock deckvest (automatic) with crotch straps and a tether with a snap shackle at the chest. The crotch straps are very important to stop the lifejacket being torn off your body in rough seas.
2) I wear around my waist in certain conditions but always have with me a bum bag inside there is my PLB (406 EPIRB and 121.5), VHF (with DSC), GPS, a laser flare and a spare whistle. The 406 tells the coastguard there is a problem, the 121.5 is the frequency they can home in on. The VHF would allow me to talk to them assuming I am concience and the DSC feature on the VHF allows me to alert boats within range that I have a problem and gives them my GPS location on there built in VHF.

NB Not pictured is my bright yellow drysuit which is what I tend to wear offshore by Kokatat it is more visible than my black foul weather gear.

Something to bear in mind if you are travelling is that the GPS takes a while to get a new fix if you fly with it so when you first get to your destination it is best to turn it on to find itself again.

The coastguard had a few questions which would have helped in their search. Wanting to know what the crew were wearing and what the vessel looked like. So I will send my family and friends an email with a picture of the boat if I am going offshore in future. If I am wearing foulweather gear it is always Musto and all black.

I hope everyone can take something useful away from this tragedy and I am proud of how my yacht club SFYC has pulled together and is handling it all. They have now called off the search so a total of 5 were lost http://news.yahoo.com/c-guard-ends-search-4-missing-yacht-racers-065444796–spt.html