If your radio has DSC, press the red distress button first. Then on VHF channel 16: say MAYDAY three times and your boat’s name three times, then your position, what’s wrong, how many people are on board and the help you need. Say “OVER” and listen. No radio? Call the Coast Guard’s regional 24-hour emergency line, the search and rescue centre for your waters, and give the same details in the same order. On inland lakes and rivers the Coast Guard doesn’t serve, call 911.
Fill in your boat once, then print the card and tape it next to the radio. Everything stays in your browser: nothing you type is sent or saved anywhere.
Then let go of the transmit button and listen. In Canada, the Canadian Coast Guard’s Marine Communications and Traffic Services (MCTS) centres take emergency reports on VHF channel 16, and every boat listening nearby hears you too. Whoever answers needs these details in this order, so have them ready. If nobody answers, call again. To operate a VHF marine radio in Canada you need the Restricted Operator Certificate (Maritime), the ROC(M), issued by the Canadian Power and Sail Squadrons.
The two calls exist so that channel 16 carries distress traffic only when it’s real. Picking the right one isn’t about manners: it decides how every station that hears you reacts.
Grave and imminent danger to the boat or a life: sinking, fire, person overboard, serious injury.
Everyone who hears it must stop transmitting and help if they can. Never make a false Mayday.
Urgent, but no immediate danger to life: a dead motor drifting toward rocks or a shipping channel, a medical problem that isn’t critical yet.
Same structure, with “PAN-PAN” three times instead. If nobody’s life is at risk and you just need a hand back, see broken down: who to call.
Plenty of runabouts, canoes and personal watercraft carry no VHF at all. Then the Canadian Coast Guard’s instruction is to call “your regional 24 hours emergency line”, the search and rescue centre for your waters: British Columbia and Yukon 1-800-567-5111 or 250-413-8933 (JRCC Victoria); Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut 1-800-267-7270 or 613-965-3870 (JRCC Trenton); Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and PEI 1-800-565-1582 or 902-427-8200 (JRCC Halifax); Quebec 1-800-463-4393 or 418-648-3599 (MRSC Québec); Newfoundland and Labrador 1-800-563-2444 or 709-772-5151 (MRSC St. John’s). The second number of each pair is the one listed for satellite, local or out-of-area calls. Name the place in words (“Lake Ontario, off Toronto Island”), and give the same items in the same order: who you are, where, what’s wrong, how many people, and whether everyone’s wearing a PFD. Read your latitude and longitude off a GPS app rather than describing the shoreline. On inland lakes and rivers the Coast Guard doesn’t serve, Transport Canada says to call 911.
If you have a radio, it comes first. Transport Canada: “Marine VHF radio is generally the best way to send a distress alert.” Dialling *16 on a cell phone may reach the nearest Coast Guard MCTS centre where your carrier supports it, but Transport Canada says it’s “not a substitute for a marine radio”: cell phones can lose reception, won’t alert nearby vessels and don’t let rescuers follow the signal back to you. And leave a sail plan with someone you trust before you go.
By phone, from app version 1.8 (the next beta) the app calls the search and rescue centre for your position on the coasts, the St. Lawrence, the Great Lakes, Hudson Bay and the Arctic, with the regional toll-free line as a second button, and 911 on inland lakes and rivers. It shows a six-step script of what to say, with your position read out in words. In radio mode it shows this Mayday form filled in with your boat’s name, call sign in the NATO alphabet, MMSI and live position, plus DSC and Pan-Pan guidance. It doesn’t transmit anything itself and isn’t connected to 911, the Coast Guard or any rescue centre: you read the words on your own radio or phone. It doesn’t replace the radio or the training; it replaces the remembering. See how it works →
MAYDAY is the distress call: grave and imminent danger to a vessel or a life, such as sinking, fire or a person overboard. PAN-PAN is the urgency call: the situation is urgent but nobody’s life is in immediate danger, such as engine failure or a drifting boat. Both follow the same structure on VHF channel 16; a PAN-PAN starts with PAN-PAN three times and ALL STATIONS three times. Every station that hears a MAYDAY must stop transmitting.
No. The script is built in your browser. “Use my location” asks your device for its position and only puts it into the form. The share link carries your details after the # sign, a part of the address that browsers never send to a server.