Mailing List Archive Mailing List Archive
I have dived the wahoo many times, and consistantly use the wahoo for training dives with students and instructors. I have never witnessed the wahoo or its crew operate in an unsafe fashion. Just my two cents. Raimo. << will....... worse safety record compared to who ? YOU ? this summer you may have heard the sailboat calling us when matt ore did a 50 minute drifting decompression after his second dive of the day . the dive was on the hilton castle about 90ish feet deep . matt sent up no lift bag , was solo diving and ended up quite a way down current (mild current ) . drifting decos are not the normal method in the northeast , occasionally someone may send up a lift bag and tie it off on the wreckage if they can not find the anchor line or even just drift with a bag on the surface ... there is a good chance that if you do a drifting decompression with no bag , safety sausage or other indicator that you will drift away and the dive boat will not see you . next stop... england .... Very dangerous I commonly dive (taking turns with an other captain ) and spend two to three hours under water , some bottom times are over an hour. Many( most ) of my crew and customers do long dives like this too. so there was no reason to assume that there was a problem when matt was underwater for two hours. If he had tied a line off everything would have been normal ( had a reel ). I even somtimes shoot a bag and hang on a reel so my neophite customes wont kick the heck out of me , or drag me off my depth on the way down for their second dive or when they do their safety stop . we have a" sign in sheet " like all the other dive boats here in the northeast , and we check each individual person out so we can be certain that everyone is back before we leave the wreck . just like every one else here in the north east ( by the way the coast guard requires you to check people on and off the boat even if they are going onto land or on a dock )However we do not check air pressures( except to be sure air is turned on ) , enforce no deco limit diving ( hypocrisy every one knows we do extended range trips ),or force people to dive together that don't want to . we just ask everyone to plan on being back aboard at a specific time so we can get back to the dock in time for ......fills , other charters , etc. Matt had not exceeded the "be back aboard " time and other people were still diving so there was no reason to suspect trouble . I think we had about thirty divers that day ( a little crowded) I think it is unreasonable to berate me or any captain for this. If divers insist on sneaking away under water . The only control i have over people is not to take them diving if they insist on unsafe practices ...I cant tie a rope on each diver and winch him up when times up . The other incident i think you are making reference to is the sal nobel incident . This happened many years ago . We have taken steps to make sure it cant happen again This is what i recall about the incident. He kind of snuck aboard . we had two groups, three or four people in each group. A light load for the wahoo . we went to my favorite wreck the oregon , 80 to 128 feet deep .we stayed there for two dives . since we don't take walk-on's sal claimed to be part of one of the groups , each of which provided its own dive master. several things went wrong to cause the incident to be able to occur . 1) one person did not sign in ( this threw off the total count ) 2) we asked each dive master if all of their group was aboard ( sal was not in ether group ) 3) we did a" head count" instead of individually speaking to each person and checking his name off ( the count was off ) 4) sal did not return before the departure time , did not return to the anchor line to decompress and did not send up a bag. He tied a line to the bottom and decompressed with up tension on his line .( it got quite choppy so we did not see bubbles ) SO we left .....about 40 minutes after we asked everyone to be back . and sal got left in the ocean ......fortunately a sport fisherman picked him up shortly after he surfaced ... What we did to make sure this never happens again is to ALWAYS speak to each person and check them off our own sign in sheet . never use a head count as a departure count , never take the word of the instructor or dive master of a group that all there people are back, Double check the sign in sheet count with separate crew counting to be sure we have everyone . I think the wahoo's safety record is very good , considering the exposure we have . The thousands of divers we take each season , in challenging conditions the open real ocean , not shallow calm clear caribbean waters one mile off the beach. 99% of all the dives are in 110 feet of cold water or greater. It is easy for people to be highly vocal critics if they do not understand the scale of the operation . I conduct more man-dives in one weekend than most small charterboats do in a season . William conduct 10,000 man-dives in similar water and let's see your record of incidents. >> -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
Navigate by Author:
[Previous]
[Next]
[Author Search Index]
Navigate by Subject:
[Previous]
[Next]
[Subject Search Index]
[Send Reply] [Send Message with New Topic]
[Search Selection] [Mailing List Home] [Home]