[soapbox]
In addition to being a professional mariner for the Army I have a private pleasure boat that I use to play on Tampa Bay and the near coast waters of the Gulf of Mexico. I keep my 21' boat within 10 miles of land at all times. I also get to chat and talk with other boaters a fair amount so this conversation comes up a lot.
Laying Wake has a fixed mount DSC VHF connected to my chart plotter. I have a floating hand held VHF in a drybag along with a 406Mhz EPIRB. That's it kills me how many folks tell me that I'm stupid to spend that much money on electronics. Granted I used my Port Supply account to buy it, but it was about $1100 dollars of electronics, including the color chart plotter. I've had people standing on $40,000 boats tell me that a $400 EPIRB was a stupid, over priced extravagance.
I'm also
GMDSS qualified. Fun Fact: For Sea Area A2 (roughly from 20 miles to 200 miles off shore) The average time to rescue if you have a 406Mhz EPIRB is 12 hrs. If you just made a VHF call before the boat went down: 72 hrs. If you don't have a radio: Not enough people get rescued to get a useful average time.
Seriously, bring commo. Then have a back up.
[/soapbox]