Tom Smedley:
We have a trip to the Oriskany with Down Under later this month.
Has anyone been on one of these trips with them?
Can you give me a report on the operation?
Pm me if necessary.
Thanks!!
I haven't been to the Oriskany with them, but I've been on one of their charters several years ago and was happy with how they ran the boat.
When I was on their trip, they did a "triple head count" type system to make sure everyone is on board after a dive.
* first the do a number headcount.
* second they do a roll call by name after each dive
* third, they use a DAN "tag out board" that is mounted to one of the tables. each diver gets a tag they attach to your BC. After each dive, you have to return the tag to the board. The captain can look down from the wheel deck to the board and see that he has X number of divers still in the water or all are on board based on this board. While you had to take your tag off between dives, it wasn't that much of a hassle and made you feel good they had these measures in place.
Their boat is a Newton Dive Special. 46' I think. Open back for easy exit and re-entry. The front half of the lower deck is covered so you can get out of the sun. They had a marine head in the forward area.
When I was out with them last, we had a really bad current and they put out a very long (300' plus) tag line. One of the deck hands floated out to the end of the line to assist divers. We had one buddy set come up downstream of the tag line and started a surface drift. The captain stayed on the upper deck with a pair of binoculars keeping track of them until they recovered the other divers and could go get them. he also did several VHF channel 16 broadcast to alert other boaters that he had divers drifting in the current near X location and to be aware. So I they definately handled the situation pretty good.
Anwway... hope that helps. They could have changed crew since then, but I was pretty happy with them the day we went out with them.
-Mike
