Russjstewart
Contributor
Money only lets you buy the toys, it doesn't give you the ability to play with them properly
Divers Hate Auto-Pilot {img}
- Thread starter Johnoly
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Belzelbub
Contributor
I saw that pic as well as a few others on another forum.
According to witnesses, the boat was moving at a high rate of speed in the marina, and they heard the turbos spool up prior to impact. Initial reports blame a malfunction that opened throttle, but who knows for sure. A member (on that other forum) had his boat damaged by the wake in this incident. He indicated that there should be video of the whole thing, but not released yet.
According to witnesses, the boat was moving at a high rate of speed in the marina, and they heard the turbos spool up prior to impact. Initial reports blame a malfunction that opened throttle, but who knows for sure. A member (on that other forum) had his boat damaged by the wake in this incident. He indicated that there should be video of the whole thing, but not released yet.
I used to dive from a boat that had auto-pilot on the North Sea. One of the greatest benefits of that was that they didn't need to anchor on the wreck but when you came back to the surface the boat was exactly where it needed to be.
The big advantage of this was that it allowed us to set up buoys and deco stations that were not physically attached to an anchored boat. Before auto pilot attaching the buoy to the boat used to be necessary because surface currents on the North Sea can be brutal (like up to 3 kts +/- after slack) and even if the boat was only 15m away on anchor the buoy needed to be attached to the boat or you couldn't get back swimming up stream. You literally needed a physical rope connecting the two.
The depth stability on deco with the autopilot boat was a thousand fold better than we had had in the past when we didn't have free floating buoys. Previously the rocking of the boat caused a constant pulling on the line that caused the line to go up and down by as much as 3m. This required deco to be done on (long) john lines (sometimes "flapping" in the current).
The autopilot boat could "park" down current from the buoy instead of up current and allow the buoy to float. When you were done with deco you could surface and the float to the boat and you had tonnes of time to swim perpendicular to the current to grab the parking line. The obvious consequence of this, of course, is that the boat needed to have jet drive so it wasn't chopping up divers who missed grabbing the parking line and got behind the boat and had to swim to the tail line (or whatever you call that in your part of the world).
So yeah. It has a function beyond allowing clueless pilots to run their boats up on the rocks.
R..
The big advantage of this was that it allowed us to set up buoys and deco stations that were not physically attached to an anchored boat. Before auto pilot attaching the buoy to the boat used to be necessary because surface currents on the North Sea can be brutal (like up to 3 kts +/- after slack) and even if the boat was only 15m away on anchor the buoy needed to be attached to the boat or you couldn't get back swimming up stream. You literally needed a physical rope connecting the two.
The depth stability on deco with the autopilot boat was a thousand fold better than we had had in the past when we didn't have free floating buoys. Previously the rocking of the boat caused a constant pulling on the line that caused the line to go up and down by as much as 3m. This required deco to be done on (long) john lines (sometimes "flapping" in the current).
The autopilot boat could "park" down current from the buoy instead of up current and allow the buoy to float. When you were done with deco you could surface and the float to the boat and you had tonnes of time to swim perpendicular to the current to grab the parking line. The obvious consequence of this, of course, is that the boat needed to have jet drive so it wasn't chopping up divers who missed grabbing the parking line and got behind the boat and had to swim to the tail line (or whatever you call that in your part of the world).
So yeah. It has a function beyond allowing clueless pilots to run their boats up on the rocks.
R..
Jonny Wishbone
Contributor
I say pi$$ test the Captain.
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