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On Mon, 5 Feb 1996, L. Allen Beard wrote: > Folks (and George), > > I am not suggesting that the line from an up reel be tied off to the > wreck and left behind to pollute or biodegrade. I'm not making this up. I knew a diver from south Jersey- an avid wreck diver I might add- that came up with the most unusual arrangement for an up-reel I've ever seen. Mongo- that's what we call Ernest because he was a huge fellow ( he is nearly deaf so he doesn't even know we call him that)- was on a few dive lists but was limited to lurking because his fingers were so wide he hit three keys at once almost no matter how he held them. If he turned his fingers sideways the only keys hit were the F keys, CTRL, ALT and spacebar. Anyway the first time I met him he had his up-reel that consisted of 300 feet of non-galvanized heavy chain wrapped around a modified 55 gal. empty Mazola oil drum. He varied the size of the chain, using whatever he could get a hold of. Apparently he would fill the drum with water before the dive and strap the whole thing under his twin-100's. He didn't wear a weight belt. And he was always the first to the wreck which irritated his dive buddies but they never said anything about it to his face. He would use a large clip to attach his up-reel chain to the wreck, fill the drum with air to establish bouyancy and send it to the surface. On deep dives, that baby would be flying when it shot out of the water but the chain kept it firmly under control. He could deco up the chain under most conditions. Sometimes just for fun he would slip a small ring around the chain while at the bottom in a strong current and then let go and rocket himself up the chain to the surface. He told me he got off on listening to the staccato clickity-click as the links of chain racked through the metal ring. So much so that it always came as a complete surprise to him when he smacked into the drum at the surface. Fortunately, Mongo had a hard head and he would always recover within five minutes or so and make his decent down the chain to do the deco. He confided to friends that the worst part of it all was doing that deco with a splitting headache which he attributed to too much CO2 because he didn't breathe a whole lot of gas during the rocket ascent phase. Anyway, his theory for the non-galvanized chain was that after the deco was over he would detach the chain from the drum and drop it. First, it would sink fast, Second, it was biodegradable and would soon rust. He felt that he was merely returning iron from whence it came, and he believed that he was in some sense, an environmentalist. No one ever argued with him about it. But, even if they did, he never heard it because of the stress his eardrums took during the rapid descents and less frequently, the rocket rides to the surface. It all happened so fast he never cleared his ears and, anyway, he said after the first time he didn't need to after that. Mongo dived most of the wrecks along the East coast with that contraption except the artificial ones in Florida. You can tell when he has visited a wreck if you go up to its bow and look around. If he's been there you will see rusted chain laying about usually attached to some large object. Mongo reveled is his kind of diving, referring to it as, "diving large". But, an incident occurred a several years ago that brought an end to Mongo's up-reel. While "diving large" off the Virginia Capes, Mongo shot his drum to the surface not realizing that a large ship was just passing overhead- he simply did not hear the propellers overhead. The drum smashed into the hapless vessel- SS Marine Electric- ripping one of its hull plates completely off which caused the ship to sink. Mongo was ascending the chain when the Marine Electric came crashing down onto his unsuspecting body carrying him to the bottom and driving him deep into the sediment. At least that is what investigators surmise. His body was never found. When word about the accident spread throughout the diving community, the practice of Jersey divers using drum-and-chain up-reels was disavowed as "crazy". A group of concerned divers approached an engineer- who was also a diver- about the problem and collectively they developed what is now known today as the Jersey up-reel- a reel loaded with sissal line. End of story. > -- > Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@terra.net'. > Send subscription/archive requests to `techdiver-request@terra.net'. >
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