First boat salvage/recovery..

[Doby45]

Well this weekend myself and my dive buddy @Ron Crist were tasked with recovering a small 12' boat for a friend of my father-in-law. This boat was sunk the weekend of the 4th and all though it was not the Titanic, the guy we were diving for said it was a "yacht" to him. We gathered all the info we could get from the guy, depth, size, and so forth. It was in 42' of water and and this lake was claimed to be the cleanest in Georgia. We were originally told that we would have to dive off of a Bass Tracker bass boat and I was not so pleased with that, two divers in gear could literally take up that whole boat. At the last minute the guy that sunk the boat was able to get a friend of his with a pontoon boat to assist with tendering us. Thank you, sweet baby Jesus!

Sunday morning rolls in and we get all our gear to the boat (pontoon) and as we are heading out we start getting everything together. The guy that sunk the boat said he had a really good idea where the boat went down and he and his friend went out the day before with a depth finder to see if they could pin point the location a little better. As they got close to where they "thought" the boat was they saw a lure that was attached to one of the fishing poles that was on the boat. Yet another baby miracle! So they dropped an anchor and attached a jug to it and that was our starting point.

Buddy and I check all our gear and splash near the jug and signal to each other that we are going down. As we head down we notice the viz is HORRIBLE (so much for cleanest clearest lake in Georgia) and we could thank the rain the night before for the murky conditions. We head down the line and the viz gets no better, it actually get worse the lower we go and the temp is dropping pretty good too. We got down to 52* and at 42' we found the spongy nasty bottom but no boat. We are literally one foot from each other and face to face while we collect ourselves and figure out how we are gonna search in this crap. Low and behold there is a gentle current at this lake and as we are sitting there floating above the bottom we drift gently into something " HOT DAMN IT IS THE BOAT!". If we would have had to do a circle search it would have been a MUCH longer day!

As soon as we touch and identify the boat, I shot my SMB and attached it to the bow so we had a known point to return to. The original request of the owner was to see about getting the motor off first. Being it was a 15hp motor it was not too much to handle and we were able to get it disconnected and tied the original anchor line to it so they could pull it up. Once we had done what we needed to do with the motor we tried to "clean up" the loose stuff on the boat, 4 fishing rods, numerous lines and so forth. We then went ahead and surfaced and gave the topside guys the run down. They pulled the motor up and we asked them how they wanted to proceed. They wanted to see about getting some more weight off the boat and then see if the boat itself could be pulled to the surface.

Second dive we disconnected the trolling motor and battery and tied pull lines to the battery and my buddy put his SMB on the trolling motor and shot it. It was funny watching his face and the trolling motor slowly raised out of our sight and we went back to work. Being this was a simple aluminum 12' V-hull it is not a super heavy boat. We rocked the boat back and forth to break it from the bottom and I then secured a heavy bow line to the front and we went up on my SMB and surfaced.

Finally, we got to the surface and saw that they had collected the trolling motor. I then tell them we had rocked the boat and if they wanted they could try to pull it with the larger pontoon boat and see if we could get it in more shallow water. Once the pontoon boat started pulling it the boat had a natural tendency to more or less surface itself, I think the V-hull played a part in that. When we were about 20 yards from the shore you could see that the bow of the boat just broke the surface and the boat team jumped out on the shore and just pulled it the rest of the way in by hand. We flipped the boat over to empty the water and TA DA we now had floating under its own power!! Mission accomplished.

I know this was a bit long and thanks for taking your time to read it. This was a grand adventure for my buddy and me, and it helped out a good friend of my father-in-law. Lesson learned about how nice it is to have cutting tools also. On one of the ascents I was snagged by a fishing lure in the outer skin of my drysuit and the trilobite did a great job..

 

[ibj40]

That's a great story.

I once tried to find a watch a friend had dropped at the marina in Lake Meredith (North of Dandy Don's hometown), near Amarillo, Texas. Viz was so bad that I couldn't see a dive light that I had strapped to my ankle pointing up. Guy asked me to lay down on my stomach on the bottom and feel around with my hands to see if I could locate his watch. Being as we were under a marina where God knows what might have been dropped over the years, I declined. Meredith dried up over the Texas drought a couple of years ago, haven't contacted my friend to see if he walked out and found his watch.

 

[Mathieutn]

You get a geiger counter out for the muck on the bottom?

 

[Doby45]

LOL, we thought about it.

 

[BoltSnap]

Great story. I enjoyed reading it.

 

[Jared0425]

I'm glad that you were successful and many things went right instead of wrong. I had an amatuer salvage event myself a few years ago.

We had a multimillion dollar go fast boat sink itself in its own wake off Harbor Beach in Lake Huron. We were contracted to find it and we were worried that due to the fact the boat was made of ouf fiberglass which is the same density as water. Because of this, sonar would have a very difficult time in picking it up as the sound waves would just go through it. Within a half hour, the side scan picked up a massive cone shaped object rising in the water column which meant quite a bit of air was still in it. It was in 140ft of water and we dropped a shot line down. As I was descending I saw a white light in the middle, a green and red light off to either side. I thought I was narc'd even though I was only at 70ft. Sure enough hit the bow at 105 sticking straight up and down with a stream of bubbles coming out the windlass. The lights were still on after 3 days underwater! While we were down, a tug and barge was called over and dropped us a cable and hook where we attached it to the engine and pulled her up. We put bags on her and drug her up to the ramp and that was the end.

Awesome DIY stories to tell makes some of the best stories that will eventually become the highlights of ones hobby in this unique sport.

 

[psdiver102]

If you call that horrible viz, you haven't dove GA enough. it much more fun when you have to do everything by touch alone

 

[Redwine39]

Long before I started diving, we went to check out a Larson ski boat. Our first. We knew nothing about boats, but both my dad amd I thought the ramp was too steep but the owner said no problem. London two day story short, his truck and trailer and almost boat end up in the bottom of Lake Allatoona, north of Atlanta. Divers hooked a wrecker to the truck after getting his house keys and getting it in neutral. Wrecker went down the ramp and half way in the water. Day 2, brought a big rig wrecker to pull the first one out and both were hooked to the truck and pulled it out. Long 2 days and I will never forget the looks on the divers faces as they brought stuff up from the truck as powdered doughnuts floated around them.

 

[meatsim]

sounds like fun, any photos of the complete package you recovered?

 

[sunshower]

Sounds like a great adventure; congrats on the successful mission!