Canoe Club – VHF Winter Talk

Recently, Cerys and I had the opportunity to attend an evening talk, put on by the canoe club we’re members of, which focused on marine communications. Things like the International Code of Signals (ICS), semaphore, morse code, VHF, and PLBs (personal locator beacons).

The talk was the fourth one of this winter, which the canoe club puts on in the colder months, in the absence of weekly paddles. It’s the first one we have been interested in attending. It was well attended, and hosted at the lovely Plas Menai building near, Caernarfon.

We made sure we got there first, as navigating a wheelchair through crowds of people and chairs can be a little troublesome. There was a makeshift bar, and it was really lovely.

Cerys and I have done loads of research regarding all of these forms of communication since starting our adventures on the water, so a lot of the information was not new as such, but it can often be nice to see what you think is correct, be confirmed to be true. This was especially true with regard to VHF radio usage on the sea. Cerys and I, both have an Icom IC-M25 radio, that we have for when out on the water.

Interacting with both the Coastguard and/or National Coastwatch Institute (NCI), can be daunting, however often while the etiquette for using the radio when sailing (which we have researched thoroughly), feels natural for us now, there were still unknown issues with regard to the radio etiquette for a group of kayaks on open water, which we needed addressing.

We then learned a lot about PLBs, and which ones were worth owning. Then additionally, we heard from a member of the emergency services and the mountain rescue team, on why getting a proper beacon is wise, rather than just relying on emergency functions from watches and Apple based devices. Both of those people were in the crowd. The person giving the talk was a radio officer on one of the ferries regularly in Holyhead.

It was a nice evening with 20/30 members of the club, most of whom we have not even met yet, filling in gaps in our knowledge, in a lovely venue, while having a drink.

We still have some essentials to buy (a PLB for one), and maybe some courses to do, but we feel a lot better about using VHF, if and when we need to, now.

Emma