Calling UP, Genesis and others with your own dive rigs...dumb question here

[Mo2vation]

Let me preface - I live near Marina Del Rey in So Cal - but I am not now, or not ever been a boat owner. I see them rolling their sweet rigs into the marina every AM when I go and get a bagel and snapple, and I see them rolling dripping rigs off the marina every evening when I get home.

I had one buddy who owned a skiff. That's about as close as I've ever been to a real boat owner.

Dumb question: When you take out your boat (Uncle Pug, the boat, for example)...do you sort of shut the thing down, lock it up (can you really lock up a boat with all that stuff on the deck?) put the key in your pocket, set the hook and sort of dive in?

I mean, you're bottomside, the boat is rocking & rollin' top side by its lonesome. Do you go out with another non-diver to boat-sit, or do you just sort of put it in park, hope the anchor holds and the weather doesn't change and just giant stride off into the blue?

Must have some great "$%@#&...I know I parked the boat here an hour ago..." stories...

Curious...

Ken

 

[Cave Diver]

When we do boat dives out here in the Gulf of Mexico, we generally dive in teams. Team one goes in the water first and team two "boat sits." When team one returns, team two helps them up, then enters the water.

This makes sure that there is someone on the surface able to assist in the event of a problem. It's important to make sure that someone on the surface is familiar with untying and moving the boat in the event it becomes necessary.

 

[Uncle Pug]

Mo2vation once bubbled...
Must have some great "$%@#&...I know I parked the boat here an hour ago..." stories...

Do a search on: Anchored Boat Story ~I have four of them on the board I think.

At certain sites we do *anchor* Uncle Pug (the boat) with a grapple hook hand placed in the rocks... and at other sites we live boat with someone topside... usually a non-diver friend who has come along just for that purpose.

When we *anchor* we shut the diesel down since it doesn't matter anyway... but when live boating... we keep the boat *live* ... that is, running.... and the operator picks us up when we surface.

We don't lock it up and we do fly both dive flag and Alpha flag.

 

[Cave Diver]

I should probably add that most of our diving is done around oil rigs, and rather than anchor we use a "rig hook" to tie off. It's basically a long pole that is J shaped. The bend of the J is hooked over part of the rig structure, and the long end has several lengths of bungy cord fastened to the tie off rope.

 

[Mo2vation]

so you tie up on the down current side and the boat sort of pulls away from the rig (current and hook keep it off the rig) and the bungee serves as a shock cord so your boat doesn't get battered.

We make a Kelp Anchor in much the same fashion when we kayak dive. Tie off to a stringer with a bungee'd kelp anchor and flop in.

K

 

[Genesis]

But for the vast majority of boat dives, we anchor and there is one team on the boat. I carry enough anchor rode (300', plus chain) that I can anchor in 110' or so without trouble so long as the sea state is reasonable (3' or thereabouts, or better.)

I rarely "live boat", but that is due to the degree of trust you have to have with a 25 ton boat, two 500HP engines, two 26" nibral meat choppers underneath it and the fact that all that lies between you and them is the skill of the person at the helm.

I'll live boat for others in the water - I dock that thing without touching a piling, with only a foot or so of clearance all the time - but there are few people I trust enough to do it with my boat when I'm not the one driving. If one of them is on board, then I'm all for it - it has its advantages over anchored diving.

With my little boat we sometimes do "weenie dives" (a half-mile or so from the inlet or shore) where there are just two of us, and we'll leave the boat unattended. In that case the key goes with me. But I will only do those if the current and wind is blowing the right way - INSHORE! Yes, it would be a long float in, but at least you'd get in. (This is only an option in the summertime, when the water temps do not create a risk of exposure trouble; a flooded drysuit and a "lost" boat would be more than a bit likely to be the end of you at this time of year.)

The other thing is that the FIRST job when decending is to check the hookset. If its in any way unfavorable then either you can fix that or the dive is over. We've only had to abort a couple of times, but coming back and finding a trench from the anchor pulling would NOT be good.

Coming back and finding the anchor line horizontal would be worse, of course

We typically dive either reefs or wrecks around here; a wind shift will normally not cause trouble provided your hookset was good to begin with. If I was rig diving there is NO WAY I would leave the boat unattended; if the wind was to shift you'd be truly screwed and might get battered against the rig. That would be VERY bad.