hits, and tips to hookin a wreck

[Diesel298]

not new to diving, or boats ill be combining the two this summer.
ive done several charters, but never had to do muck work...
so this year ill be doin some diving with a friend, and was hoping to get soe hints and tips to hookin and tyein into a wreck.

 

[divenutny]

Find the wreck, find the highest spot, go up wind and/or up current. Drop the hook and pray it snags something. It helps to use a grapling hook with about 10 ft of chain. When diving, don't forget to tie the anchor to the wreck. It sucks when the boat drifts away. I recommend you bring a hand line to help find the anchor when it is time to come up. I find hand lines work better than reels.

Good Luck & Enjoy!

 

[mike_s]

Find the wreck, find the highest spot, go up wind and/or up current. Drop the hook and pray it snags something. It helps to use a grapling hook with about 10 ft of chain. When diving, don't forget to tie the anchor to the wreck. It sucks when the boat drifts away. I recommend you bring a hand line to help find the anchor when it is time to come up. I find hand lines work better than reels.

Good Luck & Enjoy!

I've heard the term "tie the anchor into the wreck" before, but what exactly does that mean?

Do you wrap the chain around the wreck a little or do you actually use a rope or something to tie it to the wreck?


I'm assuming that the tying in is for if the anchor/grapple was to let loose some and then fall off the wreck, right?

 

[SwimJim]

Okay, hooking a wreck starts with finding it. Sometimes easier said then done. Get a GPS and talk to people you trust and get the numbers for the wreck in question. You'll need a fish finder with a graph on your boat. Watch the GPS and graph. When you locate the spot on the GPS, drop a marker. Often coords will be a little off, but this will be your starting point. If you found the wreck at the spot great, mark it. If not you'll have to do a grid search. Toss a marker on the wreck when you find it. For markers, I use the ones that look like a little orange barbell. They come with a little moldable lead weight and some cheezy line that will only tangle. remove the wieght and line and replace it with a hundred feet of nylon cord. Unless your target wreck is deeper of course. I use eight pound down rigger balls for weights. Now that we have the target marked and know where it is, go up wind and throw the hook over. When you do hook in, the pressure of the wind will keep you hooked. Leave out a bunch of scope(line) and drag the hook down wind. You should be able to feel you hook dragging the bottom. Don't be surprised if you miss on the first try. If you do, haul in the hook and go back upwind of the mark and try again. Once you feel a solid snag, your in. Now a little about the hook itself. You can buy them, but if you can weld, you can make one up real cheap. They are basicly a graphnel hook with four tines. I use eight feet of log chain as a leader for mine. This helps keep the hook in proper orientation when your dragging it and prevents the line from being cut from rubbing on the wreck itself. I have about a two inch washer welded onto mine on the bottom of it, where the tines meet. To this I have a six foot piece of rope. The first order of business once your hooked in is to tie this rope to the wreck itself. Thats what they mean when they say they are tied in. They literaly are. This way the hook cannot dislodge while you are diving and potentially ruin your day. At the end of the dive, you untie the hook and pull it free. I wrap the leader around the tines so the rope pulls the hook backwards. Then I carry the hook, sometimes refered to as riding the hook, clear of the wreckage. Do this with extreame caution! Once clear, do your normal accent, saftey stop and you should be able to board and pull lines. Hope this helps. Have fun.

Jim

 

[divenutny]

Mike - SwimJim did a better job of explaining than I did. Tieing into the wreck means taking a 12' piece of rope, one end tied to the anchor, the other tied to a price of the wreck. SwimJim are on the same page, expect I use the GPS to get to the area, then rely on a depth finder to find the highest point of the wreck or even find the wreck. A GPS can be off a few feet. We have used floating markers as SwimJim describes, if they dont snag on the wreck, the current moved them away, confusing us. Dont skimp on the marker weight. You want the marker to stay where dropped. Too light a weight and it will move.

I avoid anchor surfing. Current can move you rather quickly across the bottom into something else. When I unhook the wreck, I foul hook the anchor, wrapping it up in the chain, letting it drag upside down while I ascend. Hoping it does not snag on something else.

Enjoy - Tom

 

[flw]

not new to diving, or boats ill be combining the two this summer.
ive done several charters, but never had to do muck work...
so this year ill be doin some diving with a friend, and was hoping to get soe hints and tips to hookin and tyein into a wreck.

We don't even try and hook into the wreck - run over the wreck a couple of times, drop a heavy shot-line in ( semi-disposable, currently we're using a 56lb weight, we use a narrow cylinderical weight so it drops fast. Drop it just uptide of the wreck, so if it drifts it'll land on the wreck itself - but hopefully will be a few feet to one side - ot make it easier if you drop it just off the stern/bow, but it takes more skill. Then leave the boat free - if everyone runs rougly the same run-time, they can all bag off the shot if the tide starts to run, and will all drift in a line, making it easy to pick them up.

 

[mike_s]

We don't even try and hook into the wreck - run over the wreck a couple of times, drop a heavy shot-line in ( semi-disposable, currently we're using a 56lb weight, we use a narrow cylinderical weight so it drops fast. Drop it just uptide of the wreck, so if it drifts it'll land on the wreck itself - but hopefully will be a few feet to one side - ot make it easier if you drop it just off the stern/bow, but it takes more skill. Then leave the boat free - if everyone runs rougly the same run-time, they can all bag off the shot if the tide starts to run, and will all drift in a line, making it easy to pick them up.

won't the weight (56lb) drag if it's not "dug in" like an anchor or hooked to the wreck or another object?

 

[flw]

won't the weight (56lb) drag if it's not "dug in" like an anchor or hooked to the wreck or another object?

No, not usually - we've sucessfully done this it sites down to 85-90m in very tidal areas ( Pentland Firth, English Channel etc). If you drop it uptide, if it does drag a bit it'll go into the wreck, not away from it. Divers should swim down a line, not haul on it anyway. It's much harder to grapple a deep wreck, especially when there is a very short tidal window

 

[matt_unique]

not new to diving, or boats ill be combining the two this summer.
ive done several charters, but never had to do muck work...
so this year ill be doin some diving with a friend, and was hoping to get soe hints and tips to hookin and tyein into a wreck.

Most charters will have setup mooring lines on a wreck to avoid having to throw anchor. As you can imagine bashing and dragging an anchor into/over a wreck damages it. Set your anchor beside the wreck, follow the line down to verify you have a good anchor set, and leave someone aboard who can operate your boat should it come free.

--Matt

 

[mike_s]

Most charters will have setup mooring lines on a wreck to avoid having to throw anchor. As you can imagine bashing and dragging an anchor into/over a wreck damages it.

Even worse, Can you imagine being a diver on the wreck when a "second" dive boat shows up and throws anchor/grapple on the wreck and it lands near you?