George-

Not defending Jersey stroke-lines and poor navigation, etc., in many of 
the wrecks around here have been torpedoed, draglined and depth-charged 
to the point of being vast rusting junk piles resembling a post holocaust 
wasteland, much less a ship. Some are doubled over so the bow and stern 
are at the same end. Usually the only "reliable" land mark are the boiler 
cores and even then you can't be sure if the represent the center of the 
ship, they could have fallen out on the way down. These are WWII wrecks, 
not the sterile, safeyfied "artificial reefs" of Florida. These ships 
suffered some very violent deaths, and their history is much of what 
makes them appealing.

Navigation is possible, however. With any luck you have hooked the edge 
of the debris field and not the center so you can follow the edge and 
find your way back. Even this can be touch and go in 5' vis. It appears 
to me that most divers around here realize that you should spend as 
little time as possible on the bottom in poor conditions or you will get 
in trouble. Unfortunately this is a skill usually learned the hard way.

Lobster hunting is almost guaranteed to get you lost, as you twist and 
turn during the hunt. It behooves the diver to stop frequently and look 
back so he knows what the return trip will look like. Personally I hate 
wreck reels and would rather reduce my exploring area than deploy one. 
The are more trouble than they are worth and in certain circumstance a 
danger to the operator. It is certainly very annoying when you have a 
great day with superb 25' of vis and all these idiots have their goddamn 
wreck reels strung out all over the place like a freaking spider web.

You also question why we dive on these junk piles looking for trinkets or 
very, very expensive lobsters (at least after you figure in what the boat 
ride, gas, equipment costs). 

Shit, George, I don't know, because they are there? Certainly caves have 
even less to offer the diver other than the adrenaline rush or 
exploration if you are lucky. Ironically if you follow the rules of cave 
diving, caves appear to be a safer way to dive then offshore, while most 
offshore divers think that cavers are nuts.

I am not sure why NE wreckers are so fixed in their ways. I will have to 
agree with JT and some others, leading by example is an effective way to 
get the word out. When a diver covered with the usual junk eyeballs a DIR 
configuration and sees you operate underwater they will, slowly but 
surely, change over and then marvel and the improvements to their dive 
that cleaning up their config accomplished. And I also agree that there 
are some divers who are complete write-off's and I guess we will have to 
wait for either Darwin or retirement weeds them out.

BYW, you and Bill can slap JT's monkey as much as you all want. He will 
continue to improve his style and technique and he is one of the few 
divers around here capable of leading a complex deep dive with staggered 
teams, support divers and a DIR attitude. He can take all the abuse you 
guys care to throw at him, but he likes diving and is forced by 
circumstances to show by example. If you want to stomp around the boat 
hollering at the strokes up here you had better have enough money to 
purchase your own boat or you won't be doing much diving. And if all you 
do is charter trips, how are you going to spread the word to the strokes?

 Jim

Sender: kirvine@sa*.ne*  Date: 8/28/99 12:59 PM

>Again, what happens when .....etc. The boat needs to be free, not
>jerking up and down with fat slobs gripping the anchor line decoing
>their titties off.
>
>An ascent lihne - as in uno, one, a single freaking line, oh ,but wait,I
>forgot, you guys can't use compasses, current, etc. to navigate, and we
>all know that to try to teach any of you higher order concepts like port
>an starboard , bow and stern, the fact that a ship under water is still
>a ship  while you are sucking air or strokemix is out of the question,
>that expecting a bunch of ponitificating know it alls to actually plan
>out their dives and stagger them is out of the question, to expect there
>to be safety dives or crew to check on the decompressing divers is out
>of the question, and to do anything that makes any sense what-so-ever by
>is out of the question.
>
>This is why you guys dive up there and we do not. This is why so many
>people who do make the mistake of going there get killed - you guys just
>do not kave a single clue about the simplest things. Forget the diving,
>we have not even gotten to that yet. What do you guys do when you go
>into a building or ride a subway - do you dial 911 and have the fire
>department come get your retarded asses out with a helicopter, or do yo
>carry a parachute and just jump out the window? 
>
>This  is the stupidest nonsense I have ever heard of. I still am trying
>to figure out how we dive all over the Bahamas, in places where you can
>not see land from a tuna tower if it had the Trade Center on it, on
>reefs and walls as that run for hundreds of miles, in ripping REAL
>currents, not the bullshit winddrift you strokes are lying about, and
>don't seem to have the clsuterfucks that you guys have on a regular
>basis.
>
>The Jersey Jerk Reel is an accomodation to air diving, stupidity,
>strokery, screwups and is a monument to institutionalized clusterfucks,
>which is the specialty of New England Wreck diving , where clusterfuck
>is the norm.
>
>  
>Scaleworks@ao*.co* wrote:
>> 
>> In a message dated 99-08-28 08:49:11 EDT, kirvine@sa*.ne* writes:
>> 
>> <<
>>  You guys are so one dimensional. What happens when somebody breaks away
>>  their jersey stroke reel for whatever reason? You guys have nothing but
>>  personal prefrerence free for alls going on up there, and that is why it
>>  is so dangerous.
>>   >>
>> 
>> George,
>> 
>> This is not personal preference, this is SOP for the NE, a bag and emergency
>> ascent line are required by almost all boats. This procedure is the sole
>> reason that we do not have dive boats chasing divers all over the ocean 
while
>> others are still on the anchor line. The diver is on the wreck, and is 
easily
>> retrieved by a float and rescue swimmer if need be. If the diver uses this
>> procedure, the dive boat will not need to be detatched from the mooring for
>> any reason. Only when a  stroke/personal preference
>> diver is on baord, and does a free ascent, is there a problem, then the crew
>> acts accordingly, the entire procedure was outlined in a post by Captain
>> Janet a few months ago, and is extremely effective.
>> 
>> Kevin
>
>
>--
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>


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