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Jim: You are not listening. I happen to agree with you that you cannot leave divers in the water. I never said you should. My point was that you should also not force a diver to ascend without proper deco. I don't see how creating an even bigger CF by having two bent divers makes the situation any better. As I said before, if I was only 5 minutes from port I would have left some one on the raft to watch over the diver untill I could get the injured diver ashore and come back for him. Most of our dives here, though, are nowhere that close in. Thank God I have never been in this position, but if it were to happen I would not leave untill I had everyone on board or I had another boat standing by to pick them up. I also never addressed the issue of taking orders from the Coast Guard Auxillary. It is my deeply held conviction that the captain has the moral responsibility and authority to to provide for the safety of his vessel, crew and passengers. With this in mind, I would never obey any "order" from anyone, including the "real" USCG that, in my opinion, put those under my care at risk. NOW as to your personal assualt on me- You obviously do not know me or my vessel and you have your facts grossly screwed up. 1. I have never "dressed up in a full captain's uniform" although I do ocassionally wear a captain's cap - it keeps the sun out of my eyes. But what if I did, would that make me less able to handle my vessel. 2. My vessel is not a little boston whaler. It is a 42 foot, 30 ton, steel hulled lake boat. But what if it were a small fiberglass boat? What is yours? 3. You got part of it right about the flare. Two years ago I was tied up to a bleach-bottle mooring (one of three) on a wreck in 130 feet of water. The other two moorings were empty and I had divers down. I was displaying day shapes, an alpha flag, a diver down flag and trailing a line with a float with another diver down flag. Another boat came up on me at full speed and hailed me to "get off of my [the other boat's] mooring!" This other boat then proceeded to maneuver right over the wreck, with the bubbles of my divers comming up around his hull. I told him I had divers down and tried to tell him to give my dvers clearance since I could not just pull out and leave them. He continued to rant and raveand to hold his position above the divers. I fired a flare, not at him, but over and to one side. If I had fired at him I certainly would not have missed. He was only 25 feet away. Now tell me - what would you have done? Good diving to you, Dale In a message dated 97-09-19 06:40:46 EDT, gmirvine@sa*.ne* (G. Irvine) writes: << Capt Dale - you just don't get it - you can not leave divers, and certainly you do not take orders from dress up phony Coast Guard wannabees. Listen , I do not have time for the usual humor, but I hear you dress up in a full captains uniform yourself to run that little boston whaler or whatever you are diving out of. The more I hear about you guys, the stranger the story gets. I hear you fired a flare gun at another dive boat, which is on par with leaving diver in water, and I hear some other things too stupid to repeat - in other words, you can't be this stupid, yet the weight of the evidence is overwhelming, and now you come right back and talk about leaving the diver again. You just don't get it - try running a non-stroke operation, instead of a dress up like a sailor charlie foxtrot. It is starting to sound to me like you guys have some kind of S$M parlor going up there, with some boat ritual that preceeds it. Next we will hear how some bull dyke in a Dominatrix full face mask popped up and strapped on the tool belt. I don't know whether to be horrifed at the stupidity up there , or to be rolling on the floor laughing at the image of the halloween show you strokes put on to go diving. Bott, or somebody tell me - are these guys really this off the wall? From: <CaptnDale@ao*.co*> ate: Wed, 17 Sep 1997 19:16:46 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: Bent Diver at Whitefish Jim: I was writing from the perspective of one of those you call "no-good underpaying, freeloading bastards in the water". From that perspective, I still would not be happy about being bent when, according to the thread on this, the harbor was only about five minutes away. I think I would rather hang out there for ten minutes or so rather than risk a hit and all that goes with it. As for what I, as a skipper, would do; that is another matter. Faced with the same situation (and with the benefit of hindsight). I would probaply have left a responsible person at the site in the raft. Good diving to you, Dale >> -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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