Kayak fishing expedition communications

Author: josh

Category: Expeditions

Created on Tuesday, 26 October 2010 17:46

Written by Josh

In preparing for the Fraser Isl expedition of '10 one topic that we wanted to nail better than we'd done the previous year was that of communications. There were a few ways we could have approached the issue, with several solutions thrown up. At the end of the day we decided to roll with a solution that meant no one had to go out and make any further purchases. If we all had Swiss bank accounts, however, it would have made sense to roll with Holger's suggestion, which was for us all to use less expensive UHF radios for general chatter and communication between the group, keeping our marine VHF radios in reserve for back up and or emergency. Ultimately though the thought of having to spend more money, not to mention adding more gear to carry, was a bit too much for a couple of us. 

Ideally, we'd all be using VHF radios freely, though power consumption is a concern. Limited by battery life and means to recharge their dedicated batteries dictates that we only switch these on when we really need to. So we've had to devise a system that allows us fair communication across the group at all times that doesn't rely on constant radio connectivity. A system that allows the group to communicate at a basic level with some rules in place to determine when radios are switched on. We arrived at agreement upon a simple system that incorporates the use of high-powered whistles, a couple of spare batteries (between the group) for our VHF radios and a buddy system. 

Typically speaking we'll be travelling in a group of four, though we're going to use a buddy system whereby each day we're assigned a buddy to stick with throughout the day. Both groups will have 2 VHF radios and one spare battery. If someone needs to stop for whatever reason that person's buddy stops, no questions asked. When travelling in a group of four, unless within earshot of each other, we're using whistles as our primary means of getting each others attention. It'll work something like this:

• 1 whistle blast - Fish on
• 2 whistle blast - Turn radios on
• 3 whistle blasts - I need help 

At any stage when the two buddy groups split up, one radio from both groups are switched on, so contact is maintained within the 2 groups. If at any stage two buddies somehow lose sight of each other, both of their radios go on and other buddy group is informed. 

With a system like this in place, we're able to establish basic communications and alerting protocols with whistles and using a simple formula of rules to dictate when and how radios are used we should all be able to stay in touch reasonably well at all times throughout the week without running our radio batteries down before the end of the trip. We don't expect to encounter any kind of emergency, but anything can happen, so whatever we do we all need to make sure we've got at least a few hours of battery life in our marine radios at all times, right to the end. At the same time, we have to be careful to not be so over zealous about preserving battery life to the point where our radios never get used. It's a fine line, but with what we've got, I think we'll find a way to walk it.