Cell Phones?.... Err Who exactly do you call when your boat is blowing away while you float?
Around here we call the club's cell phone that is permanently with the senior employee in charge - meaning at the RC or at the support boat, when there's a race o sailing class going on.
If that fails I'd call the other competitors, the other sailors believed to be on the club, the club's land line, my wife, the sailing director, other directors, another club and, if everything else fails, the firefighters. Unlike the coast guard, firefighters exist everywhere, not just at important water bodies. They are a great alternative for those who -like us- sail in places where there's no coast guard.
The senior employee is instructed to call the other club and the firefighters if he feels that the available resources will not suffice.
Each place has its own constraints and advantages, there is no best or standard procedure for anything. I'm just saying that cell phones make sense where coverage is available.
For sailing classes, for instance, everybody knows how to use them and both parents and kids feel safer and more relaxed knowing they can talk to each other if necessary. Just put it in a watertight conteiner and go.
The RC here completely abandoned VHF. They use the cell phone for everything: to talk with he rescue boat(s), to call the airport for radar or weather updates, to call the canteeen for drinks or food, to make sure all competitors understood their instructions, etc.
Regarding direction finders, distress frequencies are standard at sea, VHF follows, etc. Still, it is possible to find a DF that zeroes on a cell phone - and I wouldn't be surprised if the coast guard and/or firefighters already have them. How can you locate people after an avalanche, a tornado, an earthquake or just missing in the woods? Use a DF on the cell phone frequency.
In fact, the cell phones frequency DF makes sense for our rescue boats. I'll google it!
