vixtor
Contributor
This is not a real near miss, because the conditions were excellent and chances for something to go really wrong were less than slim. Anyway, doing the same thing another day, in another spot, could have been a real near miss or even an accident. What made me write about this is the fact that the best ideas how to avoid the situation came to my mind later, not when I needed them.
The story is like this: we went yesterday to a wreck we visit regularly. This was the first visit this season, so we were planning to redeploy the fixed mooring line, expecting it to have been destroyed by the winter storms. We usually tie 2-3 meters of chain to the wreck and then attach a rope to it. At the end of the rope we attach a plastic bottle to keep it afloat.
When we have arrived, we (as expected) didn't found the last year's mooring line. Most probably the plastic bottle was submerged in the storm, then crushed by pressure, so it didn't float anymore. We have dropped the anchor. The wreck is a huge 167 meters bulk carrier, who sank there during a storm, so it is almost impossible to miss it with the anchor. After a little drifting, the anchor got fixed into something. But while we waited for it to grab the wreck, we have just noticed the last year's bottle still floating, but a little submerged. So we decided to move the boat to the mooring line. The plan was for me to dive to the anchor and free it at the begining of my first dive.
So i jump in the water and descend on the anchor line, until I find the anchor at ~21 meters. Visibility was a ****ty 1 meter at most. The anchor was laying in the mud, not on the wreck, tangled into some big ropes (which were half burried in the sand). No wreck in sight. I knew we drifted about 30-40 meters before the anchor caught something, so the wreck could have been pretty far away. I start to untangle the anchor, and as soon as I set it free, another guy from the boat starts pulling it up (as he thought I must be on the wreck, so it didn't matter). But in fact it did, as I was in the middle of nowhere. I had two options: to try to search for the wreck, by tying the reel to the abandoned ropes, but in that visibility and without having a good idea about direction, it was pretty hard. Or, knowing there are no waves and almost no current, to do an ascent towards the surface. The situation was ideal: the wreck is at just 20-30 meters from the big 8km breakwater of the Constanta Harbour, so I could not really get lost anyway (even if we were at about 6 kilometers away from the shore and climbing the breakwater is impossible, at least i would not be in the middle of the sea without shore in sight). I did my ascent in the direction the anchor line went away, and surfaced at only 20 meters from the boat.
So it all ended well, in the given conditions. But a few things were wrong and good lessons to learn from:
a) I had no SMB with me this time, because the bolts of the pocket on the backplate were rusted and I took it away a few days ago without taking time to reinstall it.
b) We made no backup plan. We were confident the anchor is on the wreck, where it didn't really matter if it is pulled up or not.
c) This is in fact the thing that annoys me the most that I haven't considered doing. When arriving on the sand, and knowing the anchor will be pulled up at some time, the first thing I should have done was to tie my reel to it. Thus, when the anchor was pulled, I still had a line connecting me to the boat. I even had time to do it very fast when seeing the first attempt to pull. But I have just not thought about it.
Repeating these mistakes on any other wreck, far from any shore, with stronger current or some waves could have ended badly, so it is a good lesson learned for me. In such more severe circumstances I should have probably tried first to locate the wreck with a few search circles, because the risk of drifting far away while ascending in a current is much worse, but this is not an ideal situation anyway, so it should be avoided as much as possible.
The story is like this: we went yesterday to a wreck we visit regularly. This was the first visit this season, so we were planning to redeploy the fixed mooring line, expecting it to have been destroyed by the winter storms. We usually tie 2-3 meters of chain to the wreck and then attach a rope to it. At the end of the rope we attach a plastic bottle to keep it afloat.
When we have arrived, we (as expected) didn't found the last year's mooring line. Most probably the plastic bottle was submerged in the storm, then crushed by pressure, so it didn't float anymore. We have dropped the anchor. The wreck is a huge 167 meters bulk carrier, who sank there during a storm, so it is almost impossible to miss it with the anchor. After a little drifting, the anchor got fixed into something. But while we waited for it to grab the wreck, we have just noticed the last year's bottle still floating, but a little submerged. So we decided to move the boat to the mooring line. The plan was for me to dive to the anchor and free it at the begining of my first dive.
So i jump in the water and descend on the anchor line, until I find the anchor at ~21 meters. Visibility was a ****ty 1 meter at most. The anchor was laying in the mud, not on the wreck, tangled into some big ropes (which were half burried in the sand). No wreck in sight. I knew we drifted about 30-40 meters before the anchor caught something, so the wreck could have been pretty far away. I start to untangle the anchor, and as soon as I set it free, another guy from the boat starts pulling it up (as he thought I must be on the wreck, so it didn't matter). But in fact it did, as I was in the middle of nowhere. I had two options: to try to search for the wreck, by tying the reel to the abandoned ropes, but in that visibility and without having a good idea about direction, it was pretty hard. Or, knowing there are no waves and almost no current, to do an ascent towards the surface. The situation was ideal: the wreck is at just 20-30 meters from the big 8km breakwater of the Constanta Harbour, so I could not really get lost anyway (even if we were at about 6 kilometers away from the shore and climbing the breakwater is impossible, at least i would not be in the middle of the sea without shore in sight). I did my ascent in the direction the anchor line went away, and surfaced at only 20 meters from the boat.
So it all ended well, in the given conditions. But a few things were wrong and good lessons to learn from:
a) I had no SMB with me this time, because the bolts of the pocket on the backplate were rusted and I took it away a few days ago without taking time to reinstall it.
b) We made no backup plan. We were confident the anchor is on the wreck, where it didn't really matter if it is pulled up or not.
c) This is in fact the thing that annoys me the most that I haven't considered doing. When arriving on the sand, and knowing the anchor will be pulled up at some time, the first thing I should have done was to tie my reel to it. Thus, when the anchor was pulled, I still had a line connecting me to the boat. I even had time to do it very fast when seeing the first attempt to pull. But I have just not thought about it.
Repeating these mistakes on any other wreck, far from any shore, with stronger current or some waves could have ended badly, so it is a good lesson learned for me. In such more severe circumstances I should have probably tried first to locate the wreck with a few search circles, because the risk of drifting far away while ascending in a current is much worse, but this is not an ideal situation anyway, so it should be avoided as much as possible.
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