Epirbs – a Cautionary Tale

As you may know, for a variety of arcane reasons (too much to go in this post), Iron Lady is registered in the British Virgin Islands. At any rate, a whole cottage industry has grown up around foreign registrations in BVI – US Maritime Attorneys to represent me, Foreign Attorneys that are licensed to practice in BVI, Foreign Corporations, Annual fees to remain in good standing, and Foreign Radio Station Licences for all my electronics, including my EPIRB, that need to renewed annually – etc. etc.etc.

As part of my New Year duties, I need to “remind” folks that I need the renewed radio license. At the same time this year, I asked to update my EPIRB emergency contact info and also requested information on how to register a new PLB sized beacon that I intend to purchase for the dink. After several days of phone calls and emails to my maritime attorney here who talked to folks over in BVI it became apparent that my EPIRB, despite assurances to the contrary, had never been registered – VERY bad stuff.

Several more days of emails and phone calls later, I was finally given some totally incomprehensible and convoluted procedure to register my EPIRB. I suspect that the chances that it would actually get done at all (much less right) were somewhere between slim and none (and Slim had left town).

My next thought was to register directly at the SARSAT website – the folks who actually monitor the world via satellite for activated beacons. No joy – when I entered my beacon ID I was advised that it contained an invalid country code for direct registration as only certain countries permitted direct registration with SARSAT. Each beacon contains a unique hexadecimal code that identifies the beacon. This was the first time that I learned that the beacon code actually contains a unique 3 digit identifier that identifies its country of origin. Well I had purchased my beacon in the US – but how to verify that the country code in my beacon was a US code. A quick internet search revealed (thank God for the internet) an online utility that would return the country code for any beacon when the hexadecimal code of that beacon was entered. Sure enough – mine was a US code.

It then dawned on me that I might be able to register my beacon on the NOAA beacon registration website. Sure enough, it accepted my beacon code, asked me to establish a password and then opened a screen to add all the pertinent data – boat name, size, capacity, hull color, radio ID, MMSI number, communications equipment on board, registration data, owner contact and emergency contact information. Voila – it worked and didn’t even beef about the fact that Iron Lady was of foreign registry. The whole process took less then 10 minutes and I received a verification email confirming the registration and all my personal data within another few minutes. Very simple and straight forward.

It is obviously advisable to register your EPIRB in the same country as the boat is registered. I understand that some countries or beacon manufacturers will permit you (for a fee) to change the code on your beacon so you can purchase it in one country and register in another. I have been advised by Mike (FPB 64 Grey Wolf) that, unfortunately, the US is not one of the countries that permits reregistration to another country as he had tried. Someone has also mentioned that I will get a nasty “don’t do it again” letter from NOAA but it would seem (at least with a BVI registration and the problems I have had) that it might be best to live with a slap on the wrist rather than unknowingly having an unregistered beacon.

I would welcome any comments from others and their experiences as this is a subject of importance to all who venture off shore.