On the evening of Sunday, December 19, an EPIRB (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon) beacon was triggered at sea. It is a GPS beacon which indicates a position 8,4 nautical miles east of the island of Tintamarre.
The CROSS-AG (Regional Operational Center for Surveillance and Rescue - Antilles-Guyane, based in Martinique) first launched a Mayday Relay on channel 16 at 19 p.m., asking ships in transit between Saint-Martin and Saint-Barthélemy to divert to the position. There are not many people at sea, given the weather conditions, and only one skipper, on a catamaran, replies that he is willing to divert to head for the announced position. He is far away and his estimated time of arrival is over an hour and a half. The CROSS asks him to move towards the area anyway. Then the CROSS contacted the SNSM station in Saint-Martin at 20:19 p.m. to come in as reinforcements.
A team, made up of 7 volunteer lifeguards, prepares the SNS 129 boat and leaves the Marina Fort Louis at 20:42 p.m. in search of this beacon.
There is no additional information; the CROSS only knows that it is an American beacon but has no information on the name of the boat, nor to whom it belongs. It only issued its position once (at 19 p.m.) and nothing since.
The sea is bad; there are 2m to see 50m of hollow, and a lot of wind (from 3 to 50 knots). Fortunately there is the full moon which, despite many clouds and a few rain squalls, helps to illuminate the body of water and makes the visibility quite good.
SNS 129 proceeded slowly towards the given position, the bow facing the wind and the waves, and arrived in the area at 22:33, just before the catamaran which had diverted. There is absolutely nothing to report in the area: no sign of life, no raft, no people in the water, no light, no debris, no floating beacon. Really nothing to report.
The crew of the SNS 129 boat peek out with their thermal binoculars; and the Gonio is turned on to detect a possible signal from a beacon; but after having turned for 20 minutes without having other clues, the SNS 129 and the catamaran receive freedom of maneuver from the CROSS and can return to their respective port, Marigot for the SNS 129 and Gustavia for the catamaran.
At 00:20 am, the SNS 129 returned to its berth at the Marina Fort-Louis, with crew members empty-handed in this futile search for a phantom beacon.
The SNSM station in Saint-Martin reminds all users of the sea that, if your beacon is accidentally triggered, it can be turned off. But you must immediately contact the CROSS to warn that it is an accidental trigger and that there is no urgent distress.
The SNSM insists on the call to CROSS even if the boaters thought they had immediately stopped the beacon when it is triggered and it has not had time to express its position.
It is better to prevent for nothing, rather than shutting it off without saying anything…. because this can involve emergency resources such as those of the SNSM or other benevolent sailors, who search for hours in vain. SNSM would like to thank the skipper of the catamaran for taking part in this research in the open sea, far from the coast, despite the bad weather conditions.
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