True or false? Cellphone communications have improved so much that a boater doesn’t need a PLB to summon emergency help.įalse.If you decide to connect it to an inflatable life jacket, ensure the PLB will not interfere with its inflation. All of these attachment points are good as long as there is a firm connection – a clip, snap-ring, lanyard or other securing device.

To get the full benefit of a PLB, it must be securely attached to the wearer’s body. True or false? The best place to attach a PLB is your pant belt loop, foul weather jacket breast pocket, or zippered pouch in a life jacket.The best setup for heading into a remote end of the lake or to the wild end of the coast is having a EPIRB assigned to the boat, and individual PLBs for each crewmember. Perhaps, most significantly, only EPIRBs activate automatically upon submersion. That is a mistake.”Ī PLB is designed to be small and easy-to-wear, and it has smaller batteries with a shorter lifespan compared to an EPIRB. “Some boaters believe they can substitute a PLB for a vessel-specific EPIRB and have similar safety benefits. “ A PLB doesn’t check all of the boxes,” says Sensenbrenner. True or false? It’s OK to use a PLB instead of an EPIRB for your boat.įalse.The BoatUS Foundation has a four-question true-false safety quiz to help boaters understand the benefits of each. However, do recreational boaters fully understand the difference between a PLB and its larger cousin, the Emergency Position Indicating Rescue Beacon (EPIRB)? “PLBs are user-friendly and easy to maintain, and we are seeing more boaters using them as a mainstream rescue device,” said BoatUS Foundation for Boating Safety and Clean Water Assistant Director of Boating Safety Ted Sensenbrenner. The BoatUS Foundation offers GPS-enabled, 406-MHz Personal Locator Beacons for rent, as well as EPIRBs.ĪNNAPOLIS, Md., J– The proliferation of personal locator beacons (PLBs), whose diminutive size belie their enormous on-water safety advantage, are no longer thought of exotic rescue electronics.

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