Four Divers Rescued By Coast Guard - Panama City, FL

[moosicman]

Coast Guard Rescues Four in Gulf

I've not heard anything else about this. If anyone else hears anything, please post it.

---------- Post added August 31st, 2013 at 10:46 PM ----------

USCG Rescues Divers Off Panama City Coast - WMBB News 13 - The Panhandle's News Leader

 

[pocky21]

News to me as well - I know the current was absolutely ripping offshore when I was out yesterday. Glad to see they are alright.

 

[Hetland]

This is from someone that knows the divers: They were diving without an operator (or anyone) on the boat. Coast Guard saw one of them waving a dive lite and picked them up.

After the incident, the Captain of the private vessel couldn't "get" that you shouldn't dive with an unattended boat and instead, focused on things that may have miraculously prevented them from taking a slow cruise to Brownsville, Texas, none of which included having an operator on the boat

 

[DandyDon]

It's not clear, but since one of them left his rig with the others and tried to swim ashore, I think they failed to leave anyone on the boat. I just got a PLB of my own, more for inland risks, but I'll see how much trouble it is to dive with it on the next trip? http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ge...dont-all-travelers-carry-plbs-everywhere.html

Rescued Divers Speak on 14 Hour Ordeal

For 18 year old Victoria Mudge and her father Tom, their diving trip to see the Red Sea tugboat wreck was an activity they'd never had issues with before, but Friday their dive in the Gulf took a turn for the worse.
"I sat outside and watched the sun go down and knew something was wrong," said Andrea Mudge.
Little did Andrea know that her husband and daughter were floating in the Gulf of Mexico waiting for relief after getting separated from their boat.
"I even took my BC off, my buoyancy compensator, and gave it to my friend and started swimming with just flippers, a mask, and a swimsuit as fast as I could, and...as I swam, you know, they were getting farther and farther away, but I wasn't getting any closer to the boat," said Tom Mudge.
After turning back, the Mudge family, accompanied by two other divers, decided to stay in place and wait for a rescue team to arrive - and after 14 hours in the Gulf, it did.
"We saw the light of the helicopter so we just took our flashlights and shined it at it," said Victoria Mudge, "sure enough it saw our flashlights and came over to us."
The helicopter crew spotted the divers 20 miles off Panama City and transported them to Tyndall Air Force Base for medical attention. Aside from fatigue and dehydration, none of the divers sustained serious injuries, but they did learn an important lesson.
"When Mack at Diver's Den said, you know, you need to have a safety observer on your boat all the time," said Tom, "if we had just listened to that one, then we wouldn't be talking to you right now."
The other family involved in the dive rescue has said they're incredibly grateful for all the work the US Coast Guard and other agencies did to ensure they were found.

 

[pocky21]

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ac...ivers-rescued-coast-guard-panama-city-fl.html


The Red Sea sits about 5-6 miles out, 70' or so max depth. As I said in the other thread, currents were pretty substantial offshore (10+ out) on the previous day, definitely enough to call a dive over.

 

[lindenbruce]

It sounds like they anchored and all got into the water to me too. Boy, they got lucky. One reason I ALWAYS have at least one flashlight and a mirror on me even when diving during the day. You just never know. B.

 

[openmindOW]

If they all left the boat with no one on board and if they needed rescue, then the boat owner is an irresponsible person. I hope that the Coast Guard charges him for the chopper fuel.

 

[Hetland]

If they all left the boat with no one on board and if they needed rescue, then the boat owner is an irresponsible person. I hope that the Coast Guard charges him for the chopper fuel.

Happens all the time. We had two in Pensacola that learned this same lesson last year.

I've actually been in the water when the boat operator showed up with his dive buddy one time. That was the last time that particular activity ever took place.

No operator on board is a deal-breaker for me.

 

[torijane]

Hello. I am Tori Mudge, one of the divers that was rescued.

We anchored at the wreck at about 9AM. We then proceeded to put our gear on and head to the anchor line. As one of my dive buddies was swimming towards the front of our boat I was like thinking wow this current is really strong. I swam my hardest to get to the anchor line. It was extremely difficult. As we were heading down, I figured our anchor was on the wreck since it seemed we were traveling more parallel to the ocean floor, than heading down to it. My dad told us later that the anchor actually came up and moved while we were going down it. We swam around for a while, trying to find the wreck. It was no where in sight and then neither was our anchor line, so we decided to surface. We slowly ascended and then did the procedural safety stop. That was what made us miss the boat. My dad said he had this nagging feeling to skip the safety stop. We didn't need it because we weren't down there for that long, and we only went 60 feet. We surfaced only about 30 yards away from the boat. No matter how hard we swam we just couldn't reach it. My dad, a former marine, even took his gear off and just tried swimming with his fins to the boat as hard as he could, while the other divers and I held his gear and swam that way at a steady pace. He soon realized he didn't have much of a chance of getting to the boat, and we were just getting farther away, so he swam back to us. At that point we decided to try for land. My dad and the other divers all work on the Air Force base and were able to tell landmarks. We had our sights set on one of the towers and tried kicking towards it. But no matter how hard we tried to get to land, we just kept traveling parallel with it. Because my dad and the other two divers had gone through water survival training, I felt alittle more safe. Of course in that they had a life raft and flares. We only saw a few boats while we were out there, but none of them came close to us. We just kept kicking because we didn't want to lose sight of land. There was never actually a storm ontop of us, but that night it was lightning all around us and we could hear the rumbles of thunder. The cool thing about the water at night was there was this fluorescent algae or something in the water. When we kicked our fins the water would glow, and they were like little stars floating all around us. They stuck to the hairs on my arm and the threads of my tshirt. It was pretty awesome. Anyways, before we saw the helicopter, we were making our way towards one of the buoys that led out of the pass of Mexico Beach. Then we saw it in the distance. The spotlight of the helicopter. We shined our dive lights at it. My hands shake sometimes, and my dive light was strapped to my wrist. The coast guard said they thought it was a campfire on cape sandblast at first, but the light was moving too oddly and so they decided to check it out. The helicopter came over to us, and that was probably the happiest moment of my life. It was midnight when they picked us up. We were in the water for at least 14 hours, and we were found 9 to 10 miles away from our boat.

---------- Post added October 26th, 2013 at 09:34 AM ----------

Oh and the boat owner, my father, former U.S. Marine and Air Force, is not an irresponsible person. He's one of the bravest and most responsible man I've ever known.

---------- Post added October 26th, 2013 at 09:41 AM ----------

Not to mention he was a Leiutinant Colonel and he was very well respected.

 

[DandyDon]

Hi Tori and welcome to SB. Glad you all made it ok. With all due respect to your father in all other areas, never ever dive from a boat without a pilot on board - but I guess you realize that mistake now.

Still, I dive with a PLB now. Worth considering.