Actually he may have it right, It would appear that the article maybe correct, it looks like it was written by an Australian, and in Australia we do have VHF marine repeaters, I think he was trying to highlight that in Australia we use the International setting on the radio, which has different offsets in the DUPLEX channel allocation to the USA settings, I have lost count of how many people I have helped change their radio to "international" settings to be able to access the VHF marine repeaters here in Australia. Interestingly the last 4 VHF marine radios I purchased brand new here in Oz where all set to USA channels. And the repeaters here are mostly used as SHIP to SHIP (via a land based repeater, ship-shore-ship)