What is the craziest lift bag you have ever used successfully?
I found myself is a situation this weekend where a summer camp's cargo boat had to get salvaged before the start of the season (in 1 week). The boat is used to move all of the campers group gear into and out of camp. Personal gear is hiked in.
Situation was: "Das Boot" is a open steel rectangular tub about 6' by 15' with a slightly angled bow. The stern has a cutout for the motor that extends about 1/2 way down the stern wall (OK my boat terminology is poor). The boat was sitting about 15-20' feet from shore with the prow in 6' of water and the stern in 10'.
Didn't bring my scuba gear with me - as I didn't know of the problem. We did have several masks, some ill fitting wetsuits (at least for me), an electric air compressor with a very long hose, and a gas powered sump pump. Not wanting to have to come back up (200 miles RT) I did some scrounging around camp for ideas.
My original idea was to take a long pole and push a heavy duty truck strap under the hull in several places and inflate lift bags to move it. I was looking for soft pallet bags designed to carry several hundred pounds and then line them with garbage bags. Well as most things happen, we didn't have what I wanted and without scuba gear that plan wasn't possible anyway. First, we were at nearly 7000' so our lung power was reduced. With the suit on (3mm) I could get down, but barely and my other suited diver (7mm) couldn't descend at all. The water at 60-65F meant that non-suited swimmers couldn't stay in long.
OK, to make a long and comical story shorter... we threaded nylon cam straps with hooks (think OSH) through both handles of 50 gal rubbermaid trash cans. These were attached anywhere we could (there wasn't much). Using the air hose we inflated the inverted barrels. It took about 5 barrels to lighten the boat enough so that the shore crew of about 10 camp staffers could move it. Each time the boat moved the barrels spilled some. But it worked. By the evening the boat was completely emptied and floating.
Before anyone attacks the safety... No one was ever under the boat at any time. So the only danger in a catastrophic handle failure was to the garbage barrels themselves. I'm not even sure that the boat was ever completely off the bottom until the job was completely done.
I found myself is a situation this weekend where a summer camp's cargo boat had to get salvaged before the start of the season (in 1 week). The boat is used to move all of the campers group gear into and out of camp. Personal gear is hiked in.
Situation was: "Das Boot" is a open steel rectangular tub about 6' by 15' with a slightly angled bow. The stern has a cutout for the motor that extends about 1/2 way down the stern wall (OK my boat terminology is poor). The boat was sitting about 15-20' feet from shore with the prow in 6' of water and the stern in 10'.
Didn't bring my scuba gear with me - as I didn't know of the problem. We did have several masks, some ill fitting wetsuits (at least for me), an electric air compressor with a very long hose, and a gas powered sump pump. Not wanting to have to come back up (200 miles RT) I did some scrounging around camp for ideas.
My original idea was to take a long pole and push a heavy duty truck strap under the hull in several places and inflate lift bags to move it. I was looking for soft pallet bags designed to carry several hundred pounds and then line them with garbage bags. Well as most things happen, we didn't have what I wanted and without scuba gear that plan wasn't possible anyway. First, we were at nearly 7000' so our lung power was reduced. With the suit on (3mm) I could get down, but barely and my other suited diver (7mm) couldn't descend at all. The water at 60-65F meant that non-suited swimmers couldn't stay in long.
OK, to make a long and comical story shorter... we threaded nylon cam straps with hooks (think OSH) through both handles of 50 gal rubbermaid trash cans. These were attached anywhere we could (there wasn't much). Using the air hose we inflated the inverted barrels. It took about 5 barrels to lighten the boat enough so that the shore crew of about 10 camp staffers could move it. Each time the boat moved the barrels spilled some. But it worked. By the evening the boat was completely emptied and floating.
Before anyone attacks the safety... No one was ever under the boat at any time. So the only danger in a catastrophic handle failure was to the garbage barrels themselves. I'm not even sure that the boat was ever completely off the bottom until the job was completely done.
