47 CFR § 80.141 - General provisions for ship stations.
(a) Points of communication. Ship stations and marine utility stations on board ships are authorized to communicate with any station in the maritime mobile service.
(b) Service requirements for all ship stations.
(1) Each ship station must receive and acknowledge all communications which are addressed to the ship or to any person on board.
(2) Every ship, on meeting with any direct danger to the navigation of other ships such as ice, a derelict vessel, a tropical storm, subfreezing air temperatures associated with gale force winds causing severe icing on superstructures, or winds of force 10 or above on the Beaufort scale for which no storm warning has been received, must transmit related information to ships in the vicinity and to the authorities on land unless such action has already been taken by another station. All such radio messages must be preceded by the safety signal.
(3) A ship station may accept communications for retransmission to any other station in the maritime mobile service. Whenever such messages or communications have been received and acknowledged by a ship station for this purpose, that station must retransmit the message as soon as possible.
(c) Service requirements for vessels. Each ship station provided for compliance with Part II of Title III of the Communications Act must provide a public correspondence service on voyages of more than 24 hours for any person who requests the service. Compulsory radiotelephone ships must provide this service for at least four hours daily. The hours must be prominently posted at the principal operating location of the station.
(d) Operating conditions. Effective August 1, 1994, VHF hand-held, portable transmitters used while connected to an external power source or a ship antenna must be equipped with an automatic timing device that deactivates the transmitter and reverts the transmitter to the receive mode after an uninterrupted transmission period of five minutes, plus or minus 10 percent. Additionally, such transmitters must have a device that indicates when the automatic timer has deactivated the transmitter. See also § 80.203(c).