A Man-Over-Board emergency is a terrifying experience for any captain or crew and key for a safe recovery is to mark the casualty position quickly. Most chart plotters have a MOB event marker but accessing the function is often buried away in menus and the plotter may be below deck.
The latest yacht racing rules demand a MOB event marker to be within a few feet of the helm and on larger vessels, it may be important to have multiple activation points.
Many boaters are now integrating AIS Beacons into lifejackets so the real-time casualty position can be displayed on plotters but there’s always a delay for the beacon to compute a GPS position and activate a signal and many crew members may not have the expensive technology integrated into the life jacket.