If your radio has DSC, press the red distress button first. Then on VHF channel 16 (27 MHz: channel 88): 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 Triple Zero (000), ask for Police, say “Boat emergency, I’m on the water,” and give the same details in the same order.
Then let go of the transmit button and listen. If nobody answers within about a minute, call again. This is the order taught in boating and marine radio courses, and it matters: whoever takes your call writes it down in that order. If you hear someone else’s Mayday, don’t transmit; keep listening, and if no shore station (such as the local Marine Rescue unit) answers, try to relay it and help if you can, as Transport for NSW advises.
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 near a bar or rocks, a boat drifting toward a hazard, 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 tow, see broken down: who to call.
Plenty of tinnies, kayaks and jet skis carry no marine radio at all. Then the call is Triple Zero (000). The operator asks “police, fire or ambulance?”: say Police, then “Boat emergency, I’m on the water”, name the waterway and the nearest town, and give the same items in the same order: who you are, where, what’s wrong, how many people. Marine Rescue NSW puts it simply: “Call Triple Zero (000) and ask for Police.” Read your latitude and longitude off a GPS app rather than describing the shoreline. 911 doesn’t work in Australia, and you can’t text 000.
If you have a radio, it comes first. Transport for NSW: “A mobile phone does not replace a marine radio.” The distress channels are VHF 16, 27 MHz channel 88 and HF 4125, 6215 and 8291 kHz, but 27 MHz is on its way out: Victoria no longer counts it as a marine radio, WA phases it out by 1 September 2028, and not every Marine Rescue group monitors channel 88. Offshore, NSW also lists JRCC Australia on 1800 641 792 as a number to call from your mobile. More in how to call for help at sea and marine radio channels in Australia.
By phone, the app dials Triple Zero (000) in Australian waters and shows a six-step script of what to say, opening with “Police. Boat emergency, I’m on the water,” 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 Triple Zero, the police or Marine Rescue: 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 →