3arl J0n35
Registered
Yes, but not for myself.
We had an incident a few years ago where two inexperienced divers went into a wreck. They entered thru an open engine compartment near the rear and then got lost and ended up in the wheel house with no idea how to get back out. A diver surfaced and called the Coast Guard and they said they had a cutter in the area that was about 20 minutes out. Both divers were panicked by this time so they were sucking air and we knew they'd be out of air before 20 minutes. It was a sandy bottom and the only "hard" thing I had was my dive knife and tank (soft weights), and the dive knife was too light for the job. So I took off my BC and turned it around and smashed out the glass of the wheelhouse with the bottom of my tank. The opening was too small for them to exit but we were able to feed them nitrox from our tanks until the CG got there. They had a "jaws of life" kind of thing that worked on surface-supplied air pressure to cut the wheelhouse off the wreck with.
Idiot part was that the puddle pirate had to gear up so I told him since I was already geared up and in the water to just hand me down the grinder and I'd go cut the top off. He told me "I wasn't authorized to operate it cause I wasn't trained on how to use it." LOL Oh. OK then. Well. we'll all just wait on you then.
First thing popped in my mind was that part on "Men of Honor" at the beginning when the winch jammed and the LT told Sunday he'd better not touch that water and if he did he'd be court martialed and Sunday replied "I got a man dying down there, Sir" and he went over anyway.
I think nowadays they remove all the glass and weld the hatches shut on most wrecks that are sunk intentionally. When they sunk the JJF tugs for an artificial reef they cut the whole top of the wheelhouse off so divers couldn't get trapped inside.
We had an incident a few years ago where two inexperienced divers went into a wreck. They entered thru an open engine compartment near the rear and then got lost and ended up in the wheel house with no idea how to get back out. A diver surfaced and called the Coast Guard and they said they had a cutter in the area that was about 20 minutes out. Both divers were panicked by this time so they were sucking air and we knew they'd be out of air before 20 minutes. It was a sandy bottom and the only "hard" thing I had was my dive knife and tank (soft weights), and the dive knife was too light for the job. So I took off my BC and turned it around and smashed out the glass of the wheelhouse with the bottom of my tank. The opening was too small for them to exit but we were able to feed them nitrox from our tanks until the CG got there. They had a "jaws of life" kind of thing that worked on surface-supplied air pressure to cut the wheelhouse off the wreck with.
Idiot part was that the puddle pirate had to gear up so I told him since I was already geared up and in the water to just hand me down the grinder and I'd go cut the top off. He told me "I wasn't authorized to operate it cause I wasn't trained on how to use it." LOL Oh. OK then. Well. we'll all just wait on you then.
First thing popped in my mind was that part on "Men of Honor" at the beginning when the winch jammed and the LT told Sunday he'd better not touch that water and if he did he'd be court martialed and Sunday replied "I got a man dying down there, Sir" and he went over anyway.
I think nowadays they remove all the glass and weld the hatches shut on most wrecks that are sunk intentionally. When they sunk the JJF tugs for an artificial reef they cut the whole top of the wheelhouse off so divers couldn't get trapped inside.
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