An E-whaaa?
An EPIRB one of the essential pieces of safety gear on board Totem. EPIRB stands for emergency position-indicating radio beacon. It's a distress beacon that uses an international satellite system to provide tracking data search and rescue, so that in the unlikely event of a catastrophic emergency we can be found by a rescue crew. We have inadvertently come to own three of them. Redundancy is good, but that's excessive! Within the details of how this came to be is a cautionary tale.
Exhibit A: the EPIRB that NOAA doesn't loveBefore departing Australia, we wanted to have our EPIRB and emergency VHF radio serviced. They were both due for battery replacement, and for important pieces of safety equipment, a check up from a professional is a good idea anyway.
The manufacturer's agent for this region directed us to a distributor in Australia. They had an outlet in Brisbane- great! It was a 4 hour bus adventure to visit, but at least we could do it easily. It would take time to get the new battery ordered from the US, but we were waiting on other shipments so this wasn't a big deal. A pick up date was arranged for 4 weeks later.
I called the distributor a few days shy of 4 weeks to confirm the status; it was all tracking. The next day, they called us with the news that they had been dropped as the Australian distributor for the manufacturer: our replacement battery had never been shipped from the States, and they could not longer help us as they did not have the materials or the certification.
The regional rep for our EPIRB manufacturer was very nice, but couldn't solve the situation. Certification was abruptly removed for competitive reasons, and we were the casualty. Our next opportunity for battery replacement would be with the distributor in Singapore- we were given a generous offer to replace the battery there. However, since we don't expect to be in Singapore until the back half of 2013, we'd have to buy another EPIRB if we wanted one for our pending ocean passage.
It was a little frustrating to hear that our only option was to purchase a second EPIRB. But frugal as we are, we believe this is critical safety gear, so we went ahead and bought one.
That's when it really got interesting
Here's where it's good to know you can't buy just any old EPIRB. Beacon registration is done with the national registry of your ship's country of registration. Country codes are built into each beacon's unique ID. These can be changed, but only if the beacon in question matches the requirements of the country in question.
It turned out that our brand new EPIRB, because it is manually activated as opposed to automatically activated by water immersion, does not meet NOAA's standards. As a result, we can't register it, which makes it useless for us. We also can no longer return it. It took a couple of weeks and ultimately email exchanges with the manufacturer's representatives in three countries (seriously) to work out that this model was a non-starter for us. By that time, we no longer had the original box- it's stashed in a floating bag with the ditch kit- so the local retailer wouldn't accept it as a return.
Because we didn't have enough already
Yes, it was then time to buy a third EPIRB! We could have ordered one from the US, guaranteeing the right coding to be in place but were concerned about adding the vagaries of international shipping to the mess. Instead, we purchased an EPIRB in Australia that we made sure would both meet NOAA's standards and could be re-coded before delivery with a unique ID that we can register in the US.
So... does anyone want to buy an EPIRB?
Our three EPIRBs strung together in the main cabin make for a pretty bit of boat jewelry, but the unit we aren't able to register really should be with someone who can use it. We don't need a spare meat tenderizer on board, and besides, the tweety-bird yellow kind of clashes with our galley décor. And yeah, it would be nice to recoup at least some of what this learning experience has cost Totem's cruising funds. I know we've got friends in the cruising world getting our blog posts, so please share this with anyone you think may be interested. Just... only boats that are registered in Australia or New Zealand.
If we could do it all over again...
Look closely at manufacturer's claims for service areas. We made our original purchase decisions for gear based upon the ability to get it serviced around the world. While circumnavigation is still not a goal we'll claim, this gear was expected to be ranging far from home for a period of time. It was assumed that when routine maintenance was necessary, we'd be able to get it done...especially in countries like Australia.
It's not just the EPIRB. Our life raft is also supposed to be serviced around the globe. And yes, it's due for repacking, but that has to be done with a certified rep. And yes, you guessed it: there isn't a single certified rep in Australia. That's one we have to postpone.
At the end of the day, we now have redundancy for our emergency beacon. It's not a bad thing. I just wish we could have learned the lesson in a less costly fashion.