How to ignore a dive flag?

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I wish that people had to take classes on how to drive boats or jet ski’s and get a license like you do for a car.

In New Jersey you do. It still does not mean that they will not give them to idiots. A dive flag was never covered in the manual or class for the Personal water craft license.

I wrote this as a new thread once but decided to save it until the topic came up...

This local idiot that goes to the same pub I do was out riding his Jetski and some guy starts shooting flares at him. After returning to the dock and inspecting his new baby(the ski) he sees a burn mark in the fiberglass and calls the state police to report it. A member of the Marine police shows up to take his report. Actually there was a swarm of local, state, and state marine police.
He told the police that he had circled the boat a few minutes before and the folks on the boat yelled, cussed and gave him the finger. He went on to say that on his next trip out toward the boat was when the crazy guy started shooting at him. When asked if he got a registration number the Jet skier could not remember it. When he was asked if he could describe the boat he told the police about the red and while flag. He was given a summons to apear in court and had to pay a fine that was very unfair because the Marine police could not find the boat that shot up his Jetski.
Personal note....beer hurts when shot from the nose. I almost got beat up because I told the guy he was an idiot and his friends did not like it.
 
jbd once bubbled...
similar experiences with jet ski's. In one case I was on my way up at the end of the dive and had to wait for 20 minutes for the idiot to leave. Had there been a way to torpedo that jet ski, I would have:upset:


Exactly! I felt the same way when that happened to me not 20 min mind you...but still! Wishing I had a glock on me (cause they can fire underwater) Ok a little excessive...but something that shoots a nonlethal item through the water to hit said watercraft... and make them think they hit a log or what not...
ok my imagination is ahead of me... is that article about the missiles....

Glad to know I wasn't the only who freaked out when a jetski passed over the first time...

__________
My instructor once informed me of at the same lake 2 flags were set on different platforms and jetskiers used that for figure 8's
 
SquintyPete once bubbled...



Exactly! I felt the same way when that happened to me not 20 min mind you...but still! Wishing I had a glock on me (cause they can fire underwater) Ok a little excessive...but something that shoots a nonlethal item through the water to hit said watercraft... and make them think they hit a log or what not...
ok my imagination is ahead of me... is that article about the missiles....

Glad to know I wasn't the only who freaked out when a jetski passed over the first time...

__________
My instructor once informed me of at the same lake 2 flags were set on different platforms and jetskiers used that for figure 8's

You could always get a whole bunch of lightweight monofilament fishing line and make a nasty little nest that floats just under the surface near the dive flag. Any jet ski coming too close would suck it into the impellor and have to spend several hours digging it out. Just be careful not to get entangled in it yourself.
 
This one comes up often on the dive boats and such down here. Here's a link to information on the law:

http://www.floridaconservation.org/law/diver-down-flag.htm.

Bottom line: A law enforcement officer has to see the jerkoff flying around your dive flag. That can be a rare occasion. But you are just as responsible to stay within the designated distance from your dive flag.

I'm still waiting for the development of some sort of proximity explosive for such an occurrence, though. :D
 
Yeah it's a real problem. If I remember right a 30m radius must be kept around a dive flag.

On my first dive in Sydney as we were ascending a jet ski went right over us..lucky we were still deep enough (our boat had the dive flag up).

It's scary cause it's so loud it seems it's so close.
 
i can understand not knowing what the dive flag looks like but when most flags now have DIVER BELOW in big letters it really makes me made that they ignore the simple request to piss off and not circle their instrument of possible death above me.
 
The operative word in the Texas boating regs is "SHOULD".


Diving and Snorkeling:

All divers shall display a free-flying, 15 by 15 inch minimum, white diagonal stripe on a red background "divers-down flag" or
a replica of the internationally recognized "Alpha Flag"
in the area in which the diving occurs.

Boaters should stay at least 50 feet away from a diver-down flag and shall operate at a speed just enough to maintain headway and steerage when between 50 and 150 feet of such a flag.
 
You CAN approach one, but you must do so at IDLE SPEED.

I had a clown actually HOOK me last summer while diving. He totally IGNORED our flag and despite the protests of the people on the surface, dropping a line with a live pinfish right in front of me as I was stringing a grouper I had just shot.

It hooked on my knife strap!

I cut his line (my knife was out and handy at that point, having just used it to dispatch the grouper), tugged on it like "Sponge Bob" until he started reeling like MAD (trying to reel in the 170lb "fish" he had on the other end :)) and then let it go - so he'd think he got cut off by a REALLY BIG fish :)

Then I did him one better and let the poor pinfish go, cut loose the hook, and pocketed the mono leader so that it wouldn't foul up the wreck :)

He wasn't there when we surfaced or I would have chewed him a new one - BIGTIME.
 
We had one of our divemaster class dives at a student's house (actually the lake his house was on :D ). During the dive we can hear a boat overhead - very loud - obviously coming way to close to our flag. After the dive we were debriefing in his living room.

The student's son comes in and is telling us about the boat circling our flag and everything and points the boat out to us as it goes racing by. We all make some comments about how we'd like to blow the boater out of the water.

A couple of minutes goes by when we hear this BOOM!

We go running outside to the porch to find this kid out there shooting at the boater with a potato gun. I guess he took our comments as permission or something. :eek:ut:
 
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