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Eight people rescued after getting lost in the Everglades

rick

Administrator
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Posted June 11 2006, 5:56 PM EDT

Eight Miami-Dade County residents spent Saturday night lost in the Everglades, getting rescued Sunday morning by authorities.

A group of six people got stranded on an airboat at about 1 a.m. Sunday while looking for two friends who had been missing in the swamp for more than 24 hours, according to the Broward Sheriff's Office.

A Sheriff's Office helicopter found the group of six at....

The rest: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/miami/sfl-0611strand,0,3381566.story?coll=sfla-news-miami
 
I'll bet ya both groups know how to spell relief. Great it wasn't some sort of accident or no one was hurt. Thanx for the post.
 
EPIRB's are little personal rescue devices. Switch them on and they immediately begin to transmit your GPS location to search and rescue.
They're still pretty expensive (most run upwards of about $750), but like most electronics that price should be coming down in the near future.

I'd like to have one. If I was in the water late at night and knew there were big gator in the neighborhood, $750 bucks probably wouldn't sound
like a whole lot of money if I knew help was on the way.
 
EPIRBs are good, but they rely on the doppler shift of the signal as it reaches different satellites - sort of like a "reverse GPS". Accuracy is best achieved when a satellite is directly overhead. This may take some time depending on the various satellite locations. The SAR team will have to wait [up to] 4 hours to know exactly where you are.

The price on them is dropping (EPIRBs are about $500 now) because of the next logical step in their evolution... Built in GPS. The new breed are called GPIRBs and when activated, first get a fix on your location, then transmit the exact coords to the listening SAR teams. THen it shuts down for 20 minutes to conserve battery power, and re-fixes and re-transmits your location every 20 minutes till the batteries run out. GPIRBS are about $750. With automatic deploy when wet run for closer to $850. These are mandatory on commercial fishing vessels.

Then there are the different classes... Class B uses civilian frequencies, and does not require any license to activate, but the response time is slower. Class 406 transmits on a dedicated SAR satellite network, and response time is nearly immediate. BUT, it requires registering the unit with the FCC. That adds to the cost and hassle of inspections and re-up fees.

It's amazing that you can now "push a button" and help could be only minutes away. Throughout history, I wonder how many sailors floating in a mae-west or clinging to debris from a sunk ship wished for such a device as they died of exposure.

Pretty cool technology. These are wonderful times we're living in.... and the next 50 years are going to be downright amazing.

Someone out frogging, who runs out of gas is the type of person UNLIKELY to have one of the techie toys like an EPIRB or GPIRB. The price is going to have to drop to under $100 before I'll finally get one. I'm wondering if the mosquitoes are out in full force in the glades yet. I'm pretty sure they are.

I'm glad the mosquito-bitten boaters we found. :) Hat's off to those rescue crews out there doing that every day.

matt.
 
Great post. Mosquitoes alone can be a reason to want to be rescued. We often see photos of moose and other large animals in the water, taken in the Northern areas of this continent. They're not so interested in cooling off as they are in avoiding hordes of mosquitoes and flys.

In Jimmy Buffett's book, "A Pirate Looks at 50", he describes a night that he and a friend spent lost in the Everglades. He said that they covered themselves with nearly every article of clothing they had with them, including their rain gear, and that when daylight came he was surprised that they had any blood left.
That would make me nuts.
 
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention one thing that may have helped them. Superbowl Sunday, we spent the night IN the everglades (at one of the camps - NOT stranded) We were probably the only HUMANS out there.

We took the boat out in the quiet of the night and had some fun blasting our locomotive horn. (trying to confuse some frogs) :lol:

IMG_0702.jpg


I swear, I could hear our train horn echoing off lines of cypress trees that were miles away.

Something like that could have allowed them two boats to find each other.

And like cntry is always reminding us, A bright light shining up & out over the horizon, will light up the mist/fog - often enough for you to be located.
 
I have a small chartplotter on my airboat(mark obstructions etc..for night running) Even a hand held gps is inexpensive(less than$200) and would work fine. Never been in the glades but I know they are vast, so the question is why would you not have some type of navigational device with you and if cell phones dont work get a sat phone in case of an emergency. No reason to get lost with all the technology available.
 
Loco, one of the advantages of the newer EPIRB's is that they're water activated. It's conceivable that you could be thrown from the boat and incapacitated, but your auto-inflate PFD would keep you afloat and your water activated transmitter would summon help .... now that's high tech.
 
Olf Art":1hrlmyqj said:
Loco, one of the advantages of the newer EPIRB's is that they're water activated. It's conceivable that you could be thrown from the boat and incapacitated, but your auto-inflate PFD would keep you afloat and your water activated transmitter would summon help .... now that's high tech.
My gpirb went off on my offshore boat 75 miles out three years ago(no radio contact to far from the coast) and a coast guard helo showed up over us not long after as well as my emergency contacts were called etc(Each gpirb is registered with the fcc and boat doc # discription homeport owner info etc is listed to the id # ,id# is transmitted as well as lat lon to sattelites and ships and aircraft nearby on distress channels) Got a call the next day from a coast guard officer and had the auto switch fixed but was glad it worked so well and was glad we did not get cited for a false distress. I carry a sat phone handheld vhf and handheld gps in a ditch bag next to the 6 man inflatable life raft in addition to the boats full electronics package). As far as an airboat a handheld vhf, cell phone and handheld gps should be the least you carry but a gpirb would be a great idea on an airboat that operates in remote areas. Glad to see yall thinking about safety. speaking about safety I was shocked to find out commercial airboat insurance was alot cheaper on my new airboat than recreational insurance which was a first for me. Calm Seas...Capt. Scott
 
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