Lost at Sea

[Lloyd Jones]

Recently while on a dive holiday at Vanuatu (South West Pacific), due to a lack of communication and experience of boat operator, we were lost at sea for 2 hours after surfacing from a dive. I have read of a recent incident in Fiji (Sept 2004)

- I am from Queensland, Australia where there are strict rules, guidelines and heavy penalties for such an incident. Not to mention strict building/equipment codes applied to dive boats and qualified boat drivers.

I have several reasons for my incident as mentioned above, fortunately all turned out for the good. I would be interested to hear of other "lost at sea" incidents other than the incident in Fiji.
Marine Teacher sailteam@mail2me.com.au

 

[SquattingRadishDM]

Hi Lloyd, welcome to the board. Thanks for posting about your incident, as Im sure you have gathered from reading other posts in this section it provides a good way to share experiences we think we have learned from and hopefully highlight important safety aspects.

I'd like to hear more about ur lost at sea experience. How many of you were lost? How did you end up getting lost, did you surface in the wrong place, or were u unable to get the boats attention upon surfacing, or what? What signalling equipment did you have, whistle, safty sausage, torch etc? Probably most crucially, how did you finally get someones attention to get rescued. i.e. What peice of signalling equipment actually worked the best when put to the test.

I'm sure others will chime in if they have had similar experiences, luckily I havn't yet............fingers crossed

 

[lostinspace]

(sorry - just got to butt in here - but I love your knickname!)

 

[Lloyd Jones]

Hi Lloyd, welcome to the board. Thanks for posting about your incident, as Im sure you have gathered from reading other posts in this section it provides a good way to share experiences we think we have learned from and hopefully highlight important safety aspects.

I'd like to hear more about ur lost at sea experience. How many of you were lost? How did you end up getting lost, did you surface in the wrong place, or were u unable to get the boats attention upon surfacing, or what? What signalling equipment did you have, whistle, safty sausage, torch etc? Probably most crucially, how did you finally get someones attention to get rescued. i.e. What peice of signalling equipment actually worked the best when put to the test.

I'm sure others will chime in if they have had similar experiences, luckily I havn't yet............fingers crossed

The problem arose due to mooring line of dive boat parting - however, boat driver spoke very little English and did not have a watch to tell when divers should surface, as well after divers had surfaced they were lost in the setting sun.

In Queensland we have a sign on/off log for divers, as well dive boats are in "commercial survey" and must carry approved PFD's, fire extinguisher and oxy-viva and most importantly boat drivers must be "commercial coxswains"/

Divers were found after 2 hours by searching boats just before divers were washed ashore - if current was running in opposite direction then results may have been different - there were 8 divers in the party

 

[wscdive]

Was the boat tied to a permanent mooring line or anchored? I have surfaced in jersey to find the boat gone to collect swept away divers. Procedure was explained ahead of time to stay with the mooring ball though. (They are easier to find then divers!!) I also always carry a surface sausage and whistle just because you never know...
Its good that you all were found in good condition. If I am dming a boat i insist on the sign in sheet as verification but it doesnt sound like that would have helped here, no boat to sign into!! At least he knew how many divers to look for.

 

[Lloyd Jones]

Was the boat tied to a permanent mooring line or anchored? I have surfaced in jersey to find the boat gone to collect swept away divers. Procedure was explained ahead of time to stay with the mooring ball though. (They are easier to find then divers!!) I also always carry a surface sausage and whistle just because you never know...
Its good that you all were found in good condition. If I am dming a boat i insist on the sign in sheet as verification but it doesnt sound like that would have helped here, no boat to sign into!! At least he knew how many divers to look for.

The boat was tied to a semi permanent mooring which parted about 5 metres below the surface - DM had a safety sausage but it had a hole in it, after 20 minutes one of the divers realised they had a sausage in their BCD, but due to swells and setting sun it was not seen. Unfortunately no whistles on BCD's.

 

[drkwing]

Was this your own equipment or rental? I just saw the movie "open water" and it really makes you think about the value of a whistle. At least there was 8 of you to make a noticible amount of people missing from the dive party, as well as make it easier to see. Good to hear that you made that everything turned out ok!

 

[docmartin]

not that i want to advise against whistles... i carry a whistle and a dive alert (besides my safety sausage or lift bag). you may have heard a dive alert before. they are very loud. however, when you're downwind from the boat the sound actually does not carry very far as i learned the hard way. fortunately, they saw the sausage.
as far as sausages you may also want to consider one of those dive flags that come with a collapsible bungeed pole. that's what we used in the galapagos. it stores easily and is a breeze to deploy. the sausages are fine until you try to use them in strong winds. it's almost impossible to keep them upright in such conditions. the flag on a pole offers much less wind resistance and, therefore, is easier to use under these circumstances.

 

[Lloyd Jones]

not that i want to advise against whistles... i carry a whistle and a dive alert (besides my safety sausage or lift bag). you may have heard a dive alert before. they are very loud. however, when you're downwind from the boat the sound actually does not carry very far as i learned the hard way. fortunately, they saw the sausage.
as far as sausages you may also want to consider one of those dive flags that come with a collapsible bungeed pole. that's what we used in the galapagos. it stores easily and is a breeze to deploy. the sausages are fine until you try to use them in strong winds. it's almost impossible to keep them upright in such conditions. the flag on a pole offers much less wind resistance and, therefore, is easier to use under these circumstances.

I run a dive operation at my high school in Queensland (I am a marine studies teacher) - I think I was lulled into a false sense of security by thinking someone else is doing the planning and worrying about safety, I was on a "dive holiday" - I was alarmed with boats not being registered, overloading of boats,not enough PFD's, no fire extinguisher and no oxy viva but still chose to dive, so I must take responsibility for my actions, a more cautious fellow would say I am not going to dive.

 

[sea nmf]

Do you think that a signaling mirror would have worked in these conditions?