shmeeg
22-03-08, 01:27
We recently had an offer for a day out on a friend's fancy boat (50ft gin palace type not set up for diving) and thought we would take our gear to get in a dive. The plan was to dive the Lady Isabella, get some scallops and then do the sight seeing thing. Even though it was a westerly and about 2' chop we thought it would be OK, so they dropped us off on the wreck. We did a small tiki tour as we had seen it before and headed for the deeper water to collect our dinner. All was well, catch bags full and we headed back to the wreck. To Gedan's merit, he thought we should ascend from 27m but I decided to head back to the wreck where the boat had dropped us off. We ascended into a full blown gale with chop around 4-5' - too close to the rocks for the boat to pick us up safely with the onshore wind. The boat had a ladder and transom, but you had to remove your fins to get back on and with the conditions risk having your head bashed in by the transom. There was no-one one the boat with any idea of how to help divers out of the water so after several tries, niether of us could get up the ladder while we were being blown closer to the shore. The only options were to ditch our gear (which at the time seemed too catastrophic) or swim to shore and get them to pick us up in the rib (which in hindsight would have meant certain death on the rocks).
The skipper threw out a rope to drag us into deeper water which Gedan grabbed, I decided to let them sort him out 1st and swam out as far as possible while they were getting him onto the boat. I must have finned backwards for about 100m before the boat was ready to pick me up, and the seas were about 6-7' by then. I took off my fins in preperation which rendered me helpless, and only just made it up the ladder (after passing up my catchbag full of scallops) before collapsing on the transom and crawling into the safe part of the boat. I was too exhasted to remove my gear and realised and that point that we had made a serious mistake on judging the conditions and the facilities on the boat. In hindsight, if we had ditched our weight at the surface we would probably have been able to board the boat ok, but ...............well ........ that was out of the question, I mean you only ditch you weight if absolutely necessary:eek:
I can see from this experience why people say that the scallop is the most dangerous marine animal.
The skipper threw out a rope to drag us into deeper water which Gedan grabbed, I decided to let them sort him out 1st and swam out as far as possible while they were getting him onto the boat. I must have finned backwards for about 100m before the boat was ready to pick me up, and the seas were about 6-7' by then. I took off my fins in preperation which rendered me helpless, and only just made it up the ladder (after passing up my catchbag full of scallops) before collapsing on the transom and crawling into the safe part of the boat. I was too exhasted to remove my gear and realised and that point that we had made a serious mistake on judging the conditions and the facilities on the boat. In hindsight, if we had ditched our weight at the surface we would probably have been able to board the boat ok, but ...............well ........ that was out of the question, I mean you only ditch you weight if absolutely necessary:eek:
I can see from this experience why people say that the scallop is the most dangerous marine animal.