Four people aboard the vessel were stranded on a lifeboat and a dinghy in the Pacific Ocean for 10 hours
Their pizza lunch in calm seas was interrupted by a huge “bang”, and the ship sunk within fifteen minutes.
They made a mayday call on the VHF radio and set off the 406 Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB).
The distress signal was picked up by officials in Peru, who alerted the U.S. Coast Guard District 11 in Alameda, Calif., which is in charge of U.S. vessels in the Pacific.
They escaped with enough water for about a week and with a device for catching rain.
They had roughly three weeks worth of food, and a fishing pole.
The vessel “was well-equipped with safety equipment and multiple communication devices and had a trained crew to handle this open-ocean emergency until a rescue vessel arrived.”
The US Coast Guard SAR manager cautioned that new technology should not replace the use of a 406 EPIRB, which has its own batteries.
Indeed, the one issue the crew faced was battery power.
Their Iridium Go, a satellite Wi-Fi hotspot, was charged to only 32 percent (dropping to 18 percent before the rescue.)
The phone that pairs with it was at 40 percent, and the external power bank was at 25 percent.
A number of boats were in the area participating in a yachting rally, but the closest boat was a 45-foot catamaran not in the rally.
The catamaran made its way to them nine hours later and was spotted by the lifeboat and contacted by VHF to begin boarding the rescued boaters.
Read more here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2023/03/20/sailboat-hits-whale-pacific-rescue/