If your radio has DSC, press the red distress button first. Then on VHF channel 16, at high power: say MAYDAY three times and your vessel’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 112, say you are at sea, and give the same details in the same order.
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 release the transmit button and listen. If no one answers within about a minute, repeat. This is the international structure taught in VHF/SRC courses — the order matters, because rescue centres write it down in that order.
The two calls exist so that the distress channel carries only distress. Choosing the right one is not politeness — it decides how every station that hears you reacts.
Grave and imminent danger to a vessel or a life — sinking, fire, person overboard, serious injury.
Everyone who hears it must stop transmitting and assist if they can. False MAYDAYs are an offence in most countries.
Urgent, but no immediate danger to life — engine failure in a shipping lane, a drifting vessel, a medical issue that isn't critical.
Same structure, "PAN-PAN" three times instead. If nobody's life is at risk and you just need a tow, see Mayday or a tow?
Plenty of dinghies, kayaks, boards and jet skis carry no VHF at all. Then the call is 112: say you are at sea, and give the same items in the same order: who you are, where, what’s wrong, how many people. The hardest part under stress is the position: read latitude and longitude straight from a GPS app rather than describing the coastline.
If you have a radio, it comes first: a DSC alert and a call on channel 16 reach the coast station and every boat nearby at once, and a phone can lose signal a few miles out. Sailing beyond Maltese waters, the responsible centre changes; every one of them is in our European emergency numbers list.
By phone, the app dials 112 in Maltese waters (elsewhere in Europe, the responsible rescue centre) and 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 vessel’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 112 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.