The missed emergency broadcast
The Zuckerberg spokesperson offered an explanation for why Launchpad did not initially respond to the Coast Guard’s request for assistance.
“As the Coast Guard noted, the boat was not in distress, and by the time the crew reviewed the Coast Guard contact on a different radio channel from the one they were operating on, the assist was already underway,” the spokesperson said in the statement shared with news outlets. “We’re grateful all parties are safe.”
But Democrat Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, himself a member of an elite sailing club, in a Facebook post criticized the lack of response from Zuckerberg’s superyacht. “Vessels are supposed to monitor channel 16 at all times, for this exact purpose,” Whitehouse wrote. “Billionaires don’t follow that rule either?”
The US government’s radio watchkeeping regulations require any vessel equipped with a VHF marine radiotelephone to maintain watch on channel 16—reserved for emergency messages—whenever the radiotelephone is not being used for communication. Marine radiotelephones typically have dual-watch or even tri-watch features that specifically enable monitoring of multiple channels, with the transmissions on the emergency channel automatically taking priority.
That means any nearby ship monitoring the channel should have heard the stranded boaters asking the Coast Guard for help, along with hearing the Coast Guard’s follow-on request for assistance. It is also unclear why the crew of the support ship Wingman did not initially hear or heed the Coast Guard broadcast.
Zuckerberg’s superyacht has previously courted controversy for turning off its AIS transponder and “going dark” to avoid public ship-tracking services, according to YachtWorld. That is a tactic only used by “shadow fleet” vessels carrying sanctioned oil or gas, illegal fishing boats, and the high-profile owners of luxury yachts, such as Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos.
But for safety-of-navigation reasons, the Coast Guard typically requires vessels to keep AIS activated in US waters. Such AIS tracking data helped shed a little more light on this latest controversy surrounding Launchpad.