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May I be so bold as to explain why this doesn't work for us here? I guess the conditions topside must be pretty different in the Northwest. Many of the areas where we dive here see heavy shipping traffic. So if you do a drifting deco, there is the chance of being run over by a big ship. Furthermore, conditions are often rough (not that we don't have many days "as smooth as the glaze on a plate"). In heavy or even moderate seas, it can be difficult to spot a diver's lift bag or differentiate a breaking wave from a bag at a distance. In heavy swells, the lift bag can spend a lot of time in the lower part of the swell, making it nearly impossible to spot from the boat. And of course in fog, it is hard to see much of anything. The general practice here is to send a diver in to set and release the hook. As I am not too experienced with either of these procedures (yet), I don't feel qualified to comment on why the wreck can't be hooked securely -- or unhooked) without the assistance of a diver, but it seems like it would be a difficult procedure. In any case, if there are divers on the wreck expecting to come up an anchor line and the boat has gone off to fetch someone whose drifting along, well, things could get kind of hectic, divers coming up all over the place, and the boat trying to pick them up without running anyone over. I think that the dive boats used in the NE tend to be a lot bigger than the boats used in many other areas. Many of our wrecks are more than an hour's ride from the dock. Combined with the often rough conditions, it is obviously not practical to go diving off a small Zodiac here. Perhaps a truly enormous dive boat could bring a Zodiac with it and use it as a chase boat to pick up the drifting divers, but as far as I know this is not a common practice. There was an incident here a couple of years ago (I was on the boat that day) where a diver (who was equipped with a line and bag) decided to do a drifting deco for some reason I never learned. He drifted quite a distance -- about a mile I think -- and was picked up by a sailboat that happened to be passing by when he came up. This happened right around the time that the boat captain was getting ready to ask the Coast Guard to send a helicopter. Incorrect rumors of all kinds about the incident appeared all over the NE dive community within 24 hours, and I think it was the subject of some discussion on this list as well. Hope I've done the matter justice and not mis-stated any important facts. Maggie, who seems to be a northeast-wreck-diving-geek-and-boat-monkee At 10:09 AM 05/12/1999 , Kevin Connell wrote: >Although I've never dove on the east coast, I don't understand why the >conditions there are any different then the conditions here in the >northwest. Low vis, high current, cold water. We don't get the swells >inland, but I don't see why that matters. No one here uses an "upline". >Liftbag and drifting deco is the norm, some keep the hook on the wreck were >it can unsnagged from the surface and deco on the anchor line. > > >At 08:54 AM 5/12/1999 -0400, you wrote: > >On Wed, 12 May 1999, William Allen wrote: > > > >> I really believe for most Jersey divers an up line is a good safety > feature > >> that you'll never need with proper skills. They remind me a little of > >> training wheels at some point they can come off. > > > >This completely ignores the very real possiblity of the tie-in failing. > >The accepted local practice requires an upline in this case; no NY/NJ boat > >captain is going to move back in with divers in the water unless he can > >see them on the surface, and drifting ascents are just not the norm here. > > > >-- > >Art Greenberg > >artg@ec*.ne* > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >-- > >Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. > >Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'. > > >----------------------------------------------- >Kevin Connell <kevin@nw*.co*> > >NW Labor Systems, Inc >http://www.nwls.com > >And I suppose you want a user interface with >that..... >----------------------------------------------- >-- >Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. >Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'. -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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