Why? - A task saturated American controller was running out of airspace and asked us to do it just a month ago. Her box vectors deteriorated to "Hold at present position."
My solution was to throw in a nearby VOR in the Prog page, take that Bearing/Distance information and reenter it in the Data/Waypoints page, then hold off that. Maindude was smart to just punch the info into DIR 1L, saves a few button pushes.