Recreational scuba divers, Vickie Drebing and her partner, Joe, activated their Personal Locator Beacon (the ACR AquaFix™) on April 9th, during a dive off the coast of Bradenton, Florida in the Gulf of Mexico.



What: First recorded rescue from an AquaFix™ PLB activation
When: April 9th, 2005
Where: 10 miles off the coast of Bradenton, Florida in the Gulf of Mexico
Who: Vickie Drebing and partner, Joe

Two recreational scuba divers were diving on Saturday, April 9, 2005 from their 27-foot Contender, "Sea Drive," 10 miles off the coast of Bradenton in 2 - 4 foot seas in the Gulf of Mexico. The water temperature was 72 degrees and the air temperature was 79 degrees.

Their equipment included wet suits, tanks, BCs, masks, snorkels, and a dive camera and strobe light. They have been avid divers and fishermen for the past four years, going out on their boat almost every weekend.

They jumped in at 3 p.m. and after a "wonderful dive" photographing a reef in 50 feet of water, they surfaced at 3:52 p.m. only to discover an unusually strong current that caused them to drift quite a ways southwest of their boat. They tried swimming towards it but didn't make any headway. Finally,
Joe, a stronger swimmer than Vickie, decided to swim alone for the boat with the plan to motor back and pick her up. After several hours of swimming, a passing boater picked Joe up and delivered him to his boat at 6:45 p.m. For some unknown reason, the Good Samaritan would not call on his VHF
radio to report the situation to the Coast Guard. They seemed anxious to leave and after several passes to look for Vickie, they sped away.

Meanwhile, on his boat Joe discovered that his VHF could not reach the Coast Guard Station. At that point, he could no longer see Vickie and dusk was approaching. Around 7:00 p.m., he activated their new AquaFix™ 406 PLB that they had purchased at the Miami Boat Show two months before.

"The first hit on the GOES Satellite came in at 6:58 p.m. local time without location data," said Lt. J.G. Jeff Shoup, SARSAT Operations Support Officer. Shoup said the information was forwarded to the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center (AFRCC) in Langley, Virginia two minutes later. A subsequent hit to the GOES at 7:01 p.m. included GPS location data that showed the beacon's position in the Gulf off Bradenton. This new information was forwarded to the AFRCC and to the Rescue Coordination Center (RCC) in Miami or the U.S. Coast Guard one-minute later. The RCC in Miami deployed the closest available rescue asset.

At 8:10 p.m., the 41-foot Coast Guard rescue boat from CG Station Cortez arrived and began search patterns. Joe also was using his GPS to do passes. When Vickie saw the Coast Guard boat in the distance doing patterns, she turned on the strobe light from her underwater camera. They picked her
up in 30 minutes and offered medical assistance, which was not needed. They were both safe on their boat and Joe piloted home.

Meanwhile at the NOAA MCC station, additional hits were being recorded on the polar orbiting LEOSAR satellite. The 406 MHz transmission was first picked up at 7:47 p.m. and the Doppler position resolved at 7:51 p.m. This information was also forwarded to the RCC in Miami. Had the PLB not provided GPS data, this would have been the first notification the Coast Guard received.

"When this beacon acquired and transmitted GPS data, it saved 49 minutes," Shoup added. "Just like the system was designed to do."

While Vickie awaited help, she said she couldn't see her boat for a full 45 minutes and was totally alone in open water with a setting sun. She was not panic-stricken because she said she has always been an adventurous person. She felt good that she had on a wet suit with a buoyant BC, that she had a strobe light and the comforting knowledge that there was a registered PLB on the boat.

"If it wasn't for the Personal Locator Beacon, I am not sure how Joe would have notified the Coast Guard for help. It worked absolutely phenomenally," she said. "Previously, we had borrowed our neighbor’s beacon and then decided that we were going to buy our own at the Boat Show. We loved this model (AquaFix™ 406) because the antenna isn't up in the air where it can get busted off, like an older model we had."

Coast Guard Officer Danielle DeMarino confirmed that it was a successful rescue.

Chris Wahler, Director of Marketing for ACR, credits the exclusive FastACQ™ GPS software in the AquaFix™ for providing the GPS data. "FastACQ™ is specifically designed for cold start applications like this," said Wahler. "Transmitting GPS data in the early stages of activation is the big advantage of GPS enabled beacons."

ACR commends Ms. Drebing for her quick thinking in using a camera flash to help rescuers locate her position. As a rule, ACR recommends having more than one rescue-signaling device either onboard or attached to a PFD or diver's BC jacket. Vickie and Joe need to take some credit for helping themselves by having a properly registered beacon and using it responsibly. They saved the taxpayers from what could have been a costly blind search, but more importantly, they saved Vickie's life.