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Here's a summary of a post I made to Quest answering some questions about boating procedures about 4 months ago: Q) How many divers/boat? How many is too many? A) As many as fit comfortably and safely for the size of the boat. This means that all gear is on the boat, the divers have room to gear up without tripping over each other, and there is room left for surface support personnel. The last dive we did had two teams of three plus two safety divers and this was just about perfect for the vessel we had rented. Too many is when you don't have room on the boat, enough safety divers to support EACH team, or adequate chase boats for the conditions. Simple logistics and communications are often the limiting factor. Too many divers is a CF waiting to happen. Q) How do you manage current? A) Often times we dive sites that have slack on the surface and are ripping below 200'. We head down the line and if we run into these conditions, we call the dive. It's over, no questions asked. If the current picks up while diving, we shorten the dive and/or do a drift deco. However, the single biggest tool we have in our fight against current is the scooter. No scooter, no diving in a situation that might encounter heavy current. When our safety divers clean us during deco, they keep a scooter for getting back and forth to the boat. Summary: If the scooter goes forward, we dive. If the scooter goes backward, we have no business being in the water and try it again some other day. Q) How deep and how long? A) Depends on the site, some of the sites are over 300', but most are in the 200' - 250' range. We limit run times to a maximum of 90 minutes. Q) How many divers in a team? A) Preferably 2, but occasionally 3 depending on the dive plan and what we're trying to accomplish during the dive. One safety diver / team in the water. Q) What would you do if you had a team drift diving a site and another vessel wanted to anchor into the same site? How do account for fishing vessels that wish to anchor on your dive site? A) Usually, we don't have a problem with fishermen or other dive boats since the stuff we dive tends to be in shipping lanes which has its own set of problems. However, since we don't anchor the boat when we're diving a site (unless it's a protected lake), the other boat is free to drop anchor, so long as they aren't dropping it on the heads of the divers already in the water. Here's a summary of how we do our diving: 1) Plan the dive. The dive starts on the surface ahead of time. We have dive plans, deco schedules, safety divers, communications, and logistics all worked out prior to entering the water. 2) Load the boat, motor out and hook the wreck. Replace the line with a floating ball and use this as the upline. First team secures the hook on the wreck. Last team clears the hook. The hook and ball are retrieved at the end of the dive. 3) Boat unhooks from the float and drifts around the site. Captain monitors vessel traffic in the area and warns approaching vessels. There is at least one surface observer/boat hand in addition to the captain. As possible, the captain or deckhand monitors the divers' bubbles. This works well with an observer on board, even in choppy seas. 4) Safety divers help teams gear up. Teams hit the water AS PLANNED. Once divers are in the water, at least one safety diver is geared up and ready to go in case of a bailout or blown dive. 5) Divers follow their plan. Safety divers hit the water so that they meet the returning divers around 100'. It is comforting looking up and seeing a safety diver waiting to provide any assistance or just to keep you company during deco. 6) The primary responsibility of the safety diver is communication. They communicate with the divers that everything is alright, everyone is present and accounted for, and that everyone has ample gas. They also are responsible for communicating with surface support. Once they have checked the divers, they head for the surface. On the surface they inform the captain of the situation in the water. If all divers are OK, the safety diver notifies the captain and heads back down to start cleaning gear (scooters, stages, etc.) from the divers in deco. If the divers aren't on the line as planned, the safety informs the captain and a search for a surface marker begins. 7) The chase boat is responsible for divers blown off the up line. The captain of the primary boat stays on the mainline until all teams are accounted for. At least one safety diver is present on the chase boat. 8) If divers don't make the up line, they shoot a bag as soon as possible to notify the surface support of their location. The chase boat motors to the marker and drops a safety diver in the water. Deco procedure is the same, it's just a drift. These procedures have worked well under conditions ranging from a calm lake to heavy current/chop/swell in Puget Sound. The keys are to work as a TEAM and to know when conditions aren't safe to dive. After all, the wreck isn't going anywhere. We never have a shortage of volunteer safety divers either. Everyone on the team has volunteered as a safety at one time or another and we have a willing pool of Tech 1 graduates that love to help out. It's a great way to get people accustomed to the way to run a dive. Just like regular diving, if you do it right from the start, you don't have bad habits to re-learn. We recently chartered a boat that was willing to adapt to our methods and they were very excited about the results. They couldn't believe that we accomplished the type of dive we did with no major problems. They're now firm believers in how we do things and are excited about doing more trips with us in the future. -----Original Message----- From: Kevin Connell [mailto:kevin@co*.ne*] Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2001 8:47 PM To: Trey Cc: techdiver@aquanaut.com Subject: RE: Deep wreck in FL This is basically how we do it. We use lightweight gear to hook the wreck, We don't have the visibility (max is about 30feet) to drift into the wrecks. Hooking is mandatory with current, or we use a torpedo anchor in no current areas. Also, we use free boats (one per team) and the disconnect the gear at the end of the dive and drift. One of the keys in heavy current or long (over 1 hour) decos is to use safety divers. We use strictly scooters (some with video) and 104s. not everyone has rb's. 104's are a bit much on board, but hold adequate gas for the bigger stuff. We'd be taking either one or two extra stages for the bigger stuff we do if we went with AL80, so we opt for the steels. Plus the water temp makes steels worthwhile. We are currently trying to develop some documentation of DIR boat diving, and once we get everything together, we will publish it on scret.org. At 05:47 AM 3/6/2001 -0500, Trey wrote: >Kev, these guys bounce to a wreck and spend two minutes and call it 30, and >then deco for a week. That is the one or two they actually hit. The rest are >sand drift dives in the Gulf Stream that take all day. > >When we do it we get my brother's or fathers boat or charter other persons >who have fast boats with excellent fishing sounders that will mark anything, >and sometimes we run a second boat as well. We mark them with the Cuban hand >reel and grouper ball with the freediving float and then scooter from up >current down to the line and then along the line below the current to the >wreck, and when we are done, we cut the grouper ball off and reel up the >float line and deco out on the drift. I have a stockpile of 40 pound iron >"balls" for this. They hit every time with the Cuban reel and the tuna line >... For longer projects, we charter a boat for the time it takes to get it >done, like the Bahamian stuff that Carmichael was doing. That was all >massive depth and no bullshit or misses - ever. > >For the regular weenie wrecks we mark them with a hook and line and scooter >in, secure the line, dive, then pull the hook and drift with the float. > >Scooters and rebreathers for the crazy stuff. Double 80's for the weenie >wrecks. > >-----Original Message----- >From: Kevin Connell [mailto:kevin@co*.ne*] >Sent: Monday, March 05, 2001 8:59 PM >To: dwiden@ho*.co*; vbtech@ci*.co*; captjt@mi*.co* >Cc: techdiver@aquanaut.com >Subject: RE: Deep wreck in FL > > >You guys sure get your panties in a wad easy. > >The point is this: You can kill yourself doing anything. Using the >argument "people die on rebreathers" is not a reason not to dive one in >general. What's next? Don't use a proper scooter because they might >actually allow you to get something done on a dive and you only can find >one wreck a year so you might get bored? > >At 08:00 PM 3/5/2001 -0500, David B. Widen wrote: > >Kevin > > > >So what is the purpose of your post. If you have nothing reasonable (good >or > >bad) to say about an activity then do not waste the bandwidth. > > > >David > > > >-----Original Message----- > >From: listowner@ci*.co* [mailto:listowner@ci*.co*]On > >Behalf Of Kevin Connell > >Sent: Monday, March 05, 2001 3:08 PM > >To: trey@ne*.co*; vbtech@ci*.co*; captjt@mi*.co* > >Cc: techdiver@aquanaut.com > >Subject: RE: Deep wreck in FL > > > > > >JT, Do you drive a car? Ride in an airplane? I'm not even sure you can > >walk, because legs have been known to kill people. > >-- >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'. -- 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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