Dive Tramp
02-06-07, 16:56
Perhaps a slightly unusual place for a dive you might think. You'd be right! A plea for help went out last week, from our Training Officer, who knows someone,who has/had a yacht on a tidal mooring on the Tay that had broken free and the mooring was now "lost". Being that I train on those waters I volunteered to help.
So, this morning, 8am (I didn't know there were two 8 o'clocks on a Saturday) I,m up and by 9am (see before :p ) I'm meeting everybody at Wormit pier. Whoops, there's no Floppy (Bob was bringing the club's Floppy but couldn't find the key to the locks) what can we do? We borrowed/hired a rib from a very nice man who runs the boating business very nearby and got kitted up at his slip and headed off to find the lost mooring.
We decided to start at the co-ords given for the mooring when it was dropped and to trawl an anchor behind in a parallel search pattern in a hope to snag the chain. After a couple of trawls with no snagging, the female member of our yacht crew said that she felt we weren't in the right place. One phone call later (what did we do before mobiles?) and we now searching 100m further down stream! (note to self:"sometimes we should listen to them").
Two passes on and ...Snagged... no, it's off ... turned around retraced ... snag again ... no its off!, Position marked on the GPS, turn around, trawl, snag ... not budging this time!! We kept the tension on the line and tied it off to the boat (with the start of the flood there was a v,small current), kitted up, over the side, hand over hand, (zero viz!!), to the bottom... "Bloody hell", I thought "we've picked up someone's anchor" but after more touchy feely and with the help of Bob's Kowalski (even so, it was still not much more than an orange glow in that viz!) we found that it was the mooring and the Grapnel had fallen straight down into the spokes (an old train wheel) (try that one again!). A short time later, after some touchy-feely examination of the remaining chain and a new line shackled to the end, we surfaced, job done. Bob later said that that was by far the least viz he's ever dived in (and, I hope he doesn't mind me saying, he's no spring chicken ). Absolutely no viz at all, the glow from his torch was about the size of a dinner plate, we couldn't see our own hands in front of our faces and we were only in 5.5metres! On ascent the blackness became deep red, then deep orange @ 3m, to grey from 2m upwards.
Quite fun really, 5.5m for 9 minutes, only mild current, in 12 degrees water, (just as well coz we couldn't have done that wearing gloves!).
Would I do it again? Too right ! It's worth it to see the look of relief on the yachties faces, that they can put their boat back safely ( or was it that they could see us again?)
So, this morning, 8am (I didn't know there were two 8 o'clocks on a Saturday) I,m up and by 9am (see before :p ) I'm meeting everybody at Wormit pier. Whoops, there's no Floppy (Bob was bringing the club's Floppy but couldn't find the key to the locks) what can we do? We borrowed/hired a rib from a very nice man who runs the boating business very nearby and got kitted up at his slip and headed off to find the lost mooring.
We decided to start at the co-ords given for the mooring when it was dropped and to trawl an anchor behind in a parallel search pattern in a hope to snag the chain. After a couple of trawls with no snagging, the female member of our yacht crew said that she felt we weren't in the right place. One phone call later (what did we do before mobiles?) and we now searching 100m further down stream! (note to self:"sometimes we should listen to them").
Two passes on and ...Snagged... no, it's off ... turned around retraced ... snag again ... no its off!, Position marked on the GPS, turn around, trawl, snag ... not budging this time!! We kept the tension on the line and tied it off to the boat (with the start of the flood there was a v,small current), kitted up, over the side, hand over hand, (zero viz!!), to the bottom... "Bloody hell", I thought "we've picked up someone's anchor" but after more touchy feely and with the help of Bob's Kowalski (even so, it was still not much more than an orange glow in that viz!) we found that it was the mooring and the Grapnel had fallen straight down into the spokes (an old train wheel) (try that one again!). A short time later, after some touchy-feely examination of the remaining chain and a new line shackled to the end, we surfaced, job done. Bob later said that that was by far the least viz he's ever dived in (and, I hope he doesn't mind me saying, he's no spring chicken ). Absolutely no viz at all, the glow from his torch was about the size of a dinner plate, we couldn't see our own hands in front of our faces and we were only in 5.5metres! On ascent the blackness became deep red, then deep orange @ 3m, to grey from 2m upwards.
Quite fun really, 5.5m for 9 minutes, only mild current, in 12 degrees water, (just as well coz we couldn't have done that wearing gloves!).
Would I do it again? Too right ! It's worth it to see the look of relief on the yachties faces, that they can put their boat back safely ( or was it that they could see us again?)