I finally got more on the story about the mysterious epirb that the Coast Guard could not track down during the Steeplechase.

Larry Ferber had misplaced (lost?) his life jacket with his personal epirb, so for the Steeplechase he brought a larger epirb that he normally uses on a bigger boat.

This epirb got stuffed in the back of his big tramp bag that was also stuffed full of lots of other mysterious stuff that sailors carry on their boats.

After they left the beach, his crew looked in the tramp bag to check for the epirb but could not see it because of all the stuff in there, so they thought it had been left at the launch area, and they did not even know it was with them.

At some point during the race it self-activated. Since it does not make an audible, apparently it was going off for hours until they cleaned out their tramp bag after finishing at Anne's beach and found the epirb and saw it blinking.

Why did it go off? Larry says that particular epirb is not supposed to go off until it is at least 4 l/2 feet underwater. So he surmises that it happened because of the volume and velocity of water being taken over the bow. The tramp bag got full of water that could not drain out, so he thinks the pressure built up in the tramp bag to the point where the epirb activated. He said the tramp bag was cram full of water.

The interesting thing is that, even though that epirb is supposed to provide GPS coordinates, the Coast Guard could not find Larry's boat, which was fine and heading for the finish line at Anne's Beach.

Meanwhile, we were all worried about Larry and Dale, and the Coast Guard was searching for them.

A Coast Guard officer from Key West called me to tell me about the epirb going off, but he did not sound overly concerned. He said, "I know catamarans capsize and then get righted, so it probably got activated and didn't turn off." This attitude concerned me, because now I was worried that they wouldn't be searching for him.

Another Coast Guard person called me later and told me that they did have coordinates from the epirb at one point,"but those were old coordinates."

The only thing I can think is that maybe parts of the Keys are in a "blind spot" -- just like many cell phones don't work in certain parts of the Keys.

Anyway, it is a concern for at least four reasons:
1. That the epirb did not seem to help for locating Larry's boat.
2. That the epirb self-activated but Larry had no way of knowing that, since it does not make a sound.
3. The Coast Guard spent a lot of time searching for no reason.
4. If there are false epirb signals like this, maybe the rescue agencies will not them seriously when they are REALLY serious.

Larry says the personal epirb that he normally carries on his life jacket can only be activated manually, and that is what he will be carrying from now on.

However, I am still curious why the Coast Guard could not get coordinates and could not find him. Maybe it is because we are in the Devil's Triangle?? <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/ooo.gif" alt="" />