Abandoning their catamaran was the last thing on the Leopard crew’s mind three minutes before encountering their crisis en route to St. Maarten.
“The boat got literally picked up,” and their story highlights the four critical components to a successful search-and-rescue operation, namely the ability to alert, locate, track and rescue a stricken vessel or mariner.
The U.S. Coast Guard arrived within hours of being alerted by their EPIRB.
While the crew enjoyed a textbook-¬perfect rescue, this would not have been possible without the International Cospas-Sarsat Programme, which began in 1979 as a collaborative effort by the United States, France and the former Soviet Union to provide a satellite monitoring and emergency-signal relay service that’s free of charge to all mariners.
Read more here:
https://www.cruisingworld.com/improving-odds-with-satellite-beacons