MOB (Man Overboard) — what happens when you tap it
The pin, the history, and why this is on every screen.
The MOB button drops a pinned GPS waypoint at your current position, before any confirm dialog and before anything else. Everything else (alarms, contacts, USCG) is queued after. The pin is the most critical fact in an MOB; capture it first.
It works with no signal. The pin needs GPS, and nothing else. Every iPhone has it. An iPad has it too if it is a Wi‑Fi + Cellular model — those carry a real GNSS receiver and fix position on their own, no signal required. A Wi‑Fi‑only iPad does not. With no fix of its own the Drop MOB pin now button uses a recent position if iOS still has one; failing that it saves no pin at all and says so: No position fix. It never puts your homeport in place of the MOB position, and it keeps trying for a fix while the drawer is open. Know which one is mounted at your helm before you need it. The Siri man-overboard phrases and the Apple Watch follow the same rule as the button: with no fix, Siri says there is no position fix and no pin was saved (“Man overboard on theONE” still opens the Emergency drawer), and the watch shows NO FIX, “iPhone has no GPS — try again”. It does not wait on the network for anything — not for a place name, not for a map tile. Offshore, in a dead spot, in airplane mode: same behaviour, same speed.
The position is stored as latitude and longitude so you can read it straight to the Coast Guard. A place name may appear beside it when there's a connection, but it is decoration and never delays the pin.
Steps
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Where it lives
Drop MOB pin now is the first thing in the Emergency drawer — full width, at the very top, above the calls, the VHF card and the Mayday script — so it is the biggest target on the screen when hands are shaking. Open the drawer from the red triangle at the top of Mission Control, the chart drawer's Man Overboard row, or by saying “Man overboard on theONE” — every man-overboard phrase opens this drawer, on a phone where theONE's first-run screens are still showing (the Terms to accept, or setup) too: there it opens on top of them, and Siri also reads you the pin's position and says to call the Coast Guard on channel 16. One tap drops the pin; nothing stands between you and it. The Emergency button on theONE's own lock screen opens the reference (calls, Channel 16, the Mayday script) without unlocking, but the pin needs the app unlocked.
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Pin first, then everything else
The tap writes latitude and longitude, the time, the fix's accuracy and where it came from — and the trip under way: the active trip, else the one happening now. On a guest's phone it is the guest's own trip even with no leg under way, which the boat's cloud asks of a guest's pin before it takes it. With no trip known the pin is made and sent without one; nothing waits on it.
Nothing is asked of the network before that write. The pin is recorded from the raw fix, and the place name is looked up afterwards and added to the record if it arrives. The same order holds on the Apple Watch and on both Siri man-overboard phrases.
A card under the button reads "PIN CAPTURED" with the coordinates in large type so you can read them straight to the Coast Guard; if the phone could not get a fix it says "PIN FAILED", then in plain words that there is no position fix and no pin was saved, with Retry right there. With VoiceOver on, the result is spoken the moment it is known, ahead of other speech: "Man overboard pin captured" and the coordinates (and how late, for a late fix), or "Man overboard pin failed" with the card's own words — also when the pin is saved minutes later while theONE keeps trying. Do not read your homeport or an old position to the Coast Guard; give them the position from the boat's chartplotter or GPS. theONE keeps trying for a fix for five minutes while the drawer is open and saves the pin the moment it gets one; a pin that lands late says, on the card and in its notes, how long after your tap it was taken.
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MOB History
Menu (☰) → MOB History. Every drop, ever, is in here. You can review past drills, read the exact coordinates, resolve a pin or mark it a false alarm, and add or edit notes on any row.
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Getting a pin off the phone
THERE IS NO SHARE BUTTON ON A MOB HISTORY ROW. The rows offer swipe-to-delete and a context menu for adding or editing a note, and nothing in the MOB feature builds a share sheet.
Read the coordinates off the row and pass them by voice — which is what you would do on VHF anyway — or screenshot the row.
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Using it for a drill
You can use the MOB pin for drills. There is no way to mark a pin as a drill. Press and hold the row in MOB History, pick Add notes…, and say so there.
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Steer-back readout
While an MOB is active, the banner shows a live line — 'Steer 037°T · 0.42 nm' — bearing (true) and distance from your current position back to the pin, updating as you move. VoiceOver reads it in words — "Steer 214 degrees true, 0.31 nautical miles" — and keeps up as the figures change; before the phone has a fix it says Acquiring GPS. Right after the drop the boat is on the pin, inside the GPS's own accuracy, where a bearing is noise: until she is further from the pin than that accuracy (the larger of the live fix's and the pin's own; 10 m when the position gives none), the line reads "Steer to the pin" with no bearing or distance, and VoiceOver says the boat is within the GPS accuracy of the pin, so there is no bearing yet. It aids the helm; the lookout, the pointer, and your MOB drill still command the recovery.