A 416 Mhz EBIRB is pretty reliable, anywhere on earth. The are in polar orbits so there aren't any high lat dead zones, and there are enough in the constellation that the dwell time is 4 hours max. You WILL be seen by one inside of 4 hours.
Sat phones depend on the sats you're using but I find them to be pretty reliable.
Every commercial EPIRB can be manually activated, there's no need to sink your boat. That's actually prefered: Turn it on and wait on the boat for someone to find you.
Depending on the size of the vessel and paranoia level of the "mariners", it's not uncommon to see vessels with VHF, and MF/HF coms but no sat coms. Sat com is still pretty pricey, and MF/HF usually works pretty well. Most commercial ships are still equipped with, and required by international law to monitor, the MF/HF distress bands, but if folks aren't familiar with the radio system, they can be tricky to get to work in a useful fashion. Pushing the big red "distress" button will send out a signal, but if you don't include useful information lots of folks will just clear it unless it's real close. You have to request an MF/HF relay, which will get it to a shore based Rescue Station.
It sounds like they needed a better "Go to Hell" plan.
