MRCC - followed by the Coast Station/MRCC voice acknowledgement
on 2182kHz. If the vessel in distress is outside of Sea Area A2, their MF
DSC Distress Alert may not be received by a Coast Station/MRCC -
and may have to be relayed to the responsible MRCC by another vessel.
The DSC Distress alert received onboard 'Wizard' might appear
on screen as:is:
Distress
232456789
49 20N 010 OlW @ 0800 UTC
Sinking
2187.5kHz
{Date/time of receipt}
This tells the bridge watchkeeper onboard the Wizard that the alert- A DISTRESS Alert.
- From MMSI 232456789.
- Position at 0800 UTC was 49 20N 010 01 W {if this was a manually
entered position it may be anything up to 4 hours old}.
Nature of distress is Sinking. - The alert was received on 2187.5kHz.
- The Date and Time of receipt of the alert will be appended
automatically by Wizard's DSC controller.
Any vessel receiving a DSC Distress Alert on 2187.5kHz -
regardless of 'Sea Area of Operation' - should assume that subsequent
voice distress communications will follow on 2182kHz, and should set
watch on that frequency immediately.
On receipt of the voice distress call and message {or if no voice
call/message is forthcoming by the time the DSC Distress Alert is received
for a second time} - receiving vessels should attempt to gain the attention
of the vessel in distress, by sending a voice acknowledgement {'Received
Mayday'} on 2182Khz, as explained in the 'Response Flowchart'
following.
{The Response Flowchart which follows is based on IMO
COMSARlCirc.21 dated 25 January 2000, which seeks to reduce the
number of erroneous DSC Distress Acknowledgements and DSC Distress
Relays}.
82 THE NAUTICAL INSTITUTE