Ah, missed that part. Thanks oldschoolto
HowardE and John Chatterton on Curse of Oak Island
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Ah, missed that part. Thanks oldschoolto
OP
HI @JohnnyC
We went with 70% for several reasons.
1) Easier to blend with the equipment we had available to mix gas.
2) John doesn't like 100% (I don't want to start any arguments with anyone about this, so take it at face value)
3) The helmet isn't O2 clean.
4) We didn't mind a few extra minutes in the water.
5) We coordinated the safety diver's deco based on an air dive with air deco.
The difference between 40% HE and 50% HE on a dive that shallow isn't worth the effort to blend the gas.
We didn't have a giant blending system. We mixed gas the old fashioned way, and only had a small booster. It took me all day to blend the gas we needed.
The 3k of gas in emergency air supply was pretty much on the truck from Mike Huntley (the safety diver and commercial company we hired to provide our umbilical, and the truck I was monitoring the dive and gas from)
As for HWS failure, that was certainly a possibility, but the water was only 48 degrees.
Lastly... John's evaluation, and whether or not Rick is completely satisfied with the results is entirely up to him. If you watch drilling down on Tuesday night at 9, we talk more about it with the Laginas. They do tell us on Drilling Down, that they may have some more questions. Maybe we'll go back. Don't know yet what the future holds?
We went with 70% for several reasons.
1) Easier to blend with the equipment we had available to mix gas.
2) John doesn't like 100% (I don't want to start any arguments with anyone about this, so take it at face value)
3) The helmet isn't O2 clean.
4) We didn't mind a few extra minutes in the water.
5) We coordinated the safety diver's deco based on an air dive with air deco.
The difference between 40% HE and 50% HE on a dive that shallow isn't worth the effort to blend the gas.
We didn't have a giant blending system. We mixed gas the old fashioned way, and only had a small booster. It took me all day to blend the gas we needed.
The 3k of gas in emergency air supply was pretty much on the truck from Mike Huntley (the safety diver and commercial company we hired to provide our umbilical, and the truck I was monitoring the dive and gas from)
As for HWS failure, that was certainly a possibility, but the water was only 48 degrees.
Lastly... John's evaluation, and whether or not Rick is completely satisfied with the results is entirely up to him. If you watch drilling down on Tuesday night at 9, we talk more about it with the Laginas. They do tell us on Drilling Down, that they may have some more questions. Maybe we'll go back. Don't know yet what the future holds?
NSMEDIC
Contributor
Kharon
Contributor
For clarity. I didn't mean to imply that the show wasn't real - I just don't think the treasure is.
I am very happy you were able to finally clear up the 10-X mystery (though Rick didn't seem to want to accept it). At least that area is done.
I also didn't mean to imply that they were making money in the hunt. What I meant was that the hunt is the treasure and that's about all they are going to get from it. I hope I'm wrong. It would be great if they actually found treasure. For all their work and faith they deserve it. Maybe it will happen.
OP
Gotcha.
Me personally, I'm not sure about the treasure on Oak Island. If I was hiding something on the island, I would have done that in the swamp... not 150 feet down.
I prefer finding shipwrecks to hunting for some mysteriously unknown treasure.
I'm sure that if they ever find anything on Oak Island, it'll be more than they'll pull off of The Republic in "Billion Dollar Wreck"
Me personally, I'm not sure about the treasure on Oak Island. If I was hiding something on the island, I would have done that in the swamp... not 150 feet down.
I prefer finding shipwrecks to hunting for some mysteriously unknown treasure.
I'm sure that if they ever find anything on Oak Island, it'll be more than they'll pull off of The Republic in "Billion Dollar Wreck"
Avonthediver
Contributor
Howard this was a great ending to the season, I have a few questions.
What did you think about the whole 10X from start to finish, and how did Dave and Dan do with the dive? They seem like good guys and it's kinda sad that for almost 50 years all they have is a story about a deep hole.
Do you and John think it's feasible to drain and keep on with 10X?
And did you ever find out what is in J. Hutton Pulitzer’s holster? And sorry again for the earlier implied insult.
And last and this is a tough one, has John ever had his nuts measured and weighed?
The dude has been jumping into deep small holes with almost no support its amazing.
And thank you for talking with us about this amazing adventure
What did you think about the whole 10X from start to finish, and how did Dave and Dan do with the dive? They seem like good guys and it's kinda sad that for almost 50 years all they have is a story about a deep hole.
Do you and John think it's feasible to drain and keep on with 10X?
And did you ever find out what is in J. Hutton Pulitzer’s holster? And sorry again for the earlier implied insult.
And last and this is a tough one, has John ever had his nuts measured and weighed?
The dude has been jumping into deep small holes with almost no support its amazing.
And thank you for talking with us about this amazing adventure
I concur. The elaborate nature implied by all of these TV shows (prior documentaries included) would seem to indicate that someone had to have spent YEARS on the island preparing all of this stuff. I just can't see anyone going to such elaborate lengths. Even IF all of the tunnels and booby traps and false leads and hidden feeds from the ocean are true, what you essentially have is a one-way ticket to dumping something, because you're never gonna be able to get back whatever you put in there. And who is going to make some sort of treasure unrecoverable?
If there ever was a treasure there, I find it far more plausible that the sisters have the story right, their great great whatever grand whatever and some friends found some buried shallow at the base of a tree and it has since been lost to the world over the ensuing couple hundred years.
OP
Our thoughts on 10x from the beginning through the end were to tackle the job and answer the questions they had. From the time that I got the initial email about the subject, I knew that John was the diver for the job, and that we could do the gig.
We didn't meet Dan Blankenship. Dave (who is a real rip) I think is still somewhat in disbelief.
I personally think that John adequately found all of the sonar targets that Brian Abbott found in his scans. I think that the second sonar image is the piece of PVC that was "floating" in the chamber. I think it looked big to both the drop camera and the sidescan because of forced perspective. The object was right next to the scanning head on the sonar (which was dropped into the chamber and probably was hanging mid-way between the floor and ceiling). This perspective probably created the shadow of the object going all the way to the floor. This resulted in what appeared to be two solid posts that went floor to ceiling. The same type of shadow is what made the vertical pipe from floor going up also appear as though it went to the ceiling.
I think that Dan Blankenship (who was dowsing to find the cavity that is at the bottom of 10X) is a good dowser. He found a water source. I think Dan who was not a diver was probably narked out of his gourd when he dove 10X in the early 90's, and probably thought he saw a lot of stuff.
I don't think it's really a possibility for them to drain 10x and work it in the dry. If they could do that, then why haven’t they already? Also, you don’t hear either Marty or Craig mention the draining of it… I think the hydrostatic pressure on the outside of that pipe would probably collapse the pipe IF they could draw the water down far enough. John thought he felt flowing water in the chamber, which he described as a sensation, but we don’t know for sure. Maybe it was the water in his suit?? But if in fact there is flow in that chamber, it would make it even harder for them to drain it. Keep in mind that while they keep talking about 240+ feet down… it was 40 feet to the waterline from the top of the hole. But this means there is still 200+ feet of water for them to remove if they hope to dry it up.
From what I hear… Pulitzer had hot sauce in his holster?
While John is certainly brave… he is not crazy. He has made many dives like this before, and we spent a lot of time planning the dive. We had good intelligence as to what to expect, so all in all, I don’t think we had any surprises, even though John got hung up once.
Me personally, I would also bury a treasure that was easy to dig up. But Dave says things like, “It’s amazing what can be accomplished when you have a sword pointed at you to dig” – meaning… This kind of engineering feat could have been done by slave labor. While to me it does sound like a lot to go through to bury treasure… It is plausible.
CT-Rich
Contributor
I have done extensive research on this.... (I started at about 10 last night). It seems to me that the original money pit dug by in the 18th and 19th Century were just digging down through naturally occurring layers of sediment. Natural disasters and floods would periodically destroy the surrounding forest and layers of log flows were covered in sediment. Oak is very hard and when covered in anaerobic sediments will last tens of thousands of years.
Clay layers over layers of natural gravel would be a perfectly natural explanation of how the water traps formed. The original diggers had no modern understanding of geology or geologic time (most of them probably had a religious education with a concept of Adam and Eve, a great flood and the Earth being created in ~4000 BCE). Wood from the original dig would probably be very interesting to carbon date. My guess is they would date back 20-30,000 years.
Their is no solid chain of evidence of the rock with the runes on it from it being dug up to the decoding of the ruins. A hokes is very likely, especially when it is so easily decoded into a cryptic message.
The gold bit that came up with the drill bit and fur? People see what they want to see and history filters out the rest. It could have been a bit of gold nugget or pyrite that was washed down from somewhere else. Anyone that runs into town shouting they found gold chain might not be that interested in saying that they changed their mind a couple of days later. If the gold was still around and could be examined, that would be a different matter.
Same thing for the gold cross. It makes for great lore when you ask grandad where his cross came from if came from a treasure chest rather than a pawn shop or card game....
I think it was an awesome adventure for JC and HE. But I think there time is better spent on ships that are better documented, rather than on Tombs that were dug in the mud to a depth of 120 ft by pirate/engineers.
Clay layers over layers of natural gravel would be a perfectly natural explanation of how the water traps formed. The original diggers had no modern understanding of geology or geologic time (most of them probably had a religious education with a concept of Adam and Eve, a great flood and the Earth being created in ~4000 BCE). Wood from the original dig would probably be very interesting to carbon date. My guess is they would date back 20-30,000 years.
Their is no solid chain of evidence of the rock with the runes on it from it being dug up to the decoding of the ruins. A hokes is very likely, especially when it is so easily decoded into a cryptic message.
The gold bit that came up with the drill bit and fur? People see what they want to see and history filters out the rest. It could have been a bit of gold nugget or pyrite that was washed down from somewhere else. Anyone that runs into town shouting they found gold chain might not be that interested in saying that they changed their mind a couple of days later. If the gold was still around and could be examined, that would be a different matter.
Same thing for the gold cross. It makes for great lore when you ask grandad where his cross came from if came from a treasure chest rather than a pawn shop or card game....
I think it was an awesome adventure for JC and HE. But I think there time is better spent on ships that are better documented, rather than on Tombs that were dug in the mud to a depth of 120 ft by pirate/engineers.
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