Precautionary Pan-pan

With reference to A Question of Seamanship, ‘Can we sail ourselves out of trouble?’ [YM, May 2018], if the plan was to sail out of trouble, wouldn’t a Pan-pan (and hopefully subsequent cancellation) have been precautionary? David Shaw

James Stevens responds: A Pan-pan call means the calling station has ‘a very urgent message to transmit concerning safety’. In this case, where a sailing yacht has no engine but a

reasonable sailing breeze and is skippered by a yachtmaster, I would describe the situation as an aggravating rather than an urgent one.