ligersandtions
Contributor
Cave Diver:
Preface:
My husband, Stephen, had recently gotten strobes to go with his camera set-up that he wanted to try out before our Cozumel trip. After a series of failed attempts (strobes not fully charged, cancelled dives due to poor conditions, very poor vis that was not conducive to wide angle shots), we decided to book a charter on the Marissa Dive Boat a few days before leaving on our trip to attempt to take some photos and get some feedback with the use of the strobes. The reason we chose to go with the Marissa is that my parents had graciously given us $500 worth of gift certificates to use on their charters.
The Dive:
The plan for the day was to first do a dive on the Yukon, followed by a dive on the Ruby E. The boat pulled up to the wreck of the Yukon and tied into the forward guns mooring ball (one of four mooring lines and mooring balls running the length of the wreck). We were each diving doubles (LP85’s for him and HP100’s for me) with 32%. We had planned for 40 minutes of bottom time at an average of 90fsw.
Stephen splashed and as the crew was handing the camera down to them, we noticed that the lens cap was still on (another failed attempt!). The swell was large (4-6’
and there was a lot of wind chop, so rather than fuss with removing the dome port and taking off the lens cap, we opted to leave the camera on board and take it for the second dive.We spent 20 minutes at 100fsw and then 20 minutes between 75 and 80 fsw. After 40 minutes, we returned to the mooring line and began our ascent. When we were at our 40’ stop (42 minutes into the dive), the line suddenly went slack. Stephen signaled to me that “the boat is no longer above us”. We didn’t think anything of it, and since we were pushing NDL’s, we continued with our normal ascent profile.
The Incident:
When we broke the surface, 47 minutes after descending, the Marissa Dive Boat was ~1000 feet away from us (keep in mind that five minutes earlier, at our 40’ stop, the boat had just broken away from the mooring line). We began surface swimming toward the boat, but quickly realized that with the conditions the way they were, that was not the smartest decision. Instead, we chose to swim to one of the mooring balls and hang on until the dive boat came back to pick us up.
When we got to the mooring line, we quickly inflated an SMB and waved it so the crew could spot us and come back to pick us up. We had assumed that other people had been blown off the wreck and they were out picking them up. For 27+ minutes, we bobbed on the surface, often being sucked back underwater due to the large swell and wind chop. At times, we could not even see the boat because of the poor surface conditions. At one point, the boat turned completely away from us and we thought they were leaving.
We originally chose to hang onto the mooring line so that we would remain in our last known location, thus making it easier for them to find us and retrieve us. During those 27 minutes, we contemplated swimming to the boat (probably close to a half a mile away before they realized what had happened), we contemplated ditching gear and swimming to shore (more than a mile away). In the end, logic prevailed and we remained in our last known location.
After we’d been on the surface for 27 minutes, we finally saw the Marissa had turned back toward us and was motoring our way. Within 35 minutes of surfacing, we were finally back on the boat. We headed to the second dive site, the Ruby E wreck, which we did not dive for two reasons: 1) we didn’t actually trust diving from the boat at that point, and 2) they did not even offer to fill our cylinders for us (they made the assumption / decision that we were not going to be doing the second dive, without even asking us).
The Cause:
With the unfriendly surface conditions, the mooring line broke. For 27 minutes, the Marissa Dive Boat drifted away from the wreck (dotted with the three remaining bright mooring balls) without even noticing. They had three crew members on the boat that day, and not one of them noticed the fact that they were no longer at the site (a site they dive multiple times a week; a site that has brightly colored mooring balls; a site that’s not so far from land that there’s no reference point to notice that you’re drifting). Obviously, none of the three crew members was watching the water attentively (there’s a difference between looking at the water and actually paying attention to what one’s supposed to be doing – which is watching for anything out of the ordinary). No one was watching the GPS (nor do they have a drift alarm to alert if they drift away from their desired location).
When they finally picked us up, one crew member even mentioned the fact that she had lamented that, “If they’re going to do this long of a dive, they really should let us know beforehand.” Note that it had been 74 minutes from the time we descended to the time that they realized that they were drifting – 74 minutes at the shallowest (most boring) part of the wreck would be a staged decompression dive, and if you recall, though we were diving doubles, we did not have deco bottles with us (at least two of the crew members on board that day are tech divers and should know that we would not doing that long of a dive if they thought about it...).
Follow-up to the Incident:
When we finally got back onto the boat, we never once heard anything resembling an apology (in fact, the crew members seemed quite defensive about the whole thing). As I mentioned previously, they didn’t even offer to fill our cylinders (we would have said “no thanks”, but the fact remains that they did not even offer).
We didn’t want to make a big deal about it in front of everyone else, so we opted to keep quiet for the time being and contact the crew later. We took off quickly when we got back in from the boat (we got back to the dock later than expected and still had a 2+ hour drive home to LA).
The next day, I emailed the captain about the incident, stating that I had some concerns (it seems complacency is a big issue with crew members not really paying attention to the water and their location, and also seems that some procedures may not be as good as they could be, such as not knowing planned run time of each team and not having a drift alarm set on their GPS so they can be alerted that they are drifting in a timely manner). I offered some suggestions as to what I think could make them a safer dive op (noted above in my concerns section). I also asked to be fairly compensated for this incident (in my mind, fair would have been to just give us all of our money back since they’ve proven to be an unsafe charter, one I would not choose to go out on again).
The response I got back from the Marissa took me by surprise. The captain bluntly stated, “For the situation that arose there is no fault or blame to put on anyone”. I strongly disagree with that statement!
In fact, I’d go so far as to say that there were factors that could have contributed to this incident on both sides. Stephen and I could have done a better job communicating what our run time was going to be (on one of the boats we dive from often, the DM always asks if anyone has a run time over an hour).
I was also told that they were operating according to “local accepted procedures” and because of the swell and wind chop couldn’t have had someone on the bow, but that the crew members were “diligently watching the water from the deck”. However, I have serious doubts that anyone was watching diligently, as the mooring balls were nearly a half mile away by the time they realized they’d drifted.
I was also told that in the past three and a half years that they’ve been going out to the Yukon, the mooring lines had only broken twice before this incident. Sure, this is an incredibly small fraction of the time that the line breaks, but when it did, it was not dealt with swiftly due to the fact that no one was paying attention enough to even realize that it had happened. Just because it only happens a small fraction of the time does not mean that one should assume it is not going to happen this time. For diving (and all other potentially high-risk activities), we have procedures in place for when the fit hits the shan – not for when everything works out smoothly. The Marissa Dive Boat did not react quickly or particularly well when the proverbial crap hit the fan.
But the thing that makes me angriest is the fact that they seem to think they’re faultless/blameless and that buffing up on some of the safety suggestions I gave them is not necessary. It’s like they think this situation was dealt with in a perfectly acceptable manner – but after 27 minutes of bobbing on the angry ocean, I can assure you, it was not acceptable.
I responded to this email restating many of my concerns, and directly asking for a refund (based on the fact that I don’t think that they’ve bothered to learn anything from this incident and it has the potential to happen again – plus, imagine if the roles had been reversed and they had remained tied to the wreck but we had been blown half a mile off; who knows if they’d have ever noticed us drifting or how long it would have taken them to decide we’d been gone long enough to warrant a call to the Coast Guard??). After 11 days, I finally got a response stating that it’s not “fair to play Monday morning quarterback” and offering more excuses about the incident, but no implication that they might actually learn and implement something from having dealt with it.
Instead, I was told that my “gift certificates have no cash value”, so the only way to not waste the money my parents spent on us is to go dive off their boat again and risk being left at sea again. In response to this, I asked if we could sell our credits to others who are still willing to dive off the boat (even after having heard this story) and was then told that $100 worth of my credits had expired (even though the email clearly states that they expire 12/30/11) and that she would not allow the $170 credit to be transferred, so we could sell up to $230 of them. So basically, we wasted $270 to be left out in the middle of the ocean.
Conclusion:
Sure, no one died, no one got hurt....and we weren’t drifting in open ocean, but it was an incredibly frustrating (and even somewhat scary) incident to have to deal with. I don’t suspect the mooring line will break next time they go out, so people are probably safe diving from this boat.
But I’d rather spend my time diving off a boat I know will treat me right; I’d rather dive with someone I’m reasonably confident will not drift away from the site, and if they do, that I’m quite confident will actually catch it in a reasonable period of time. In my opinion, there are a number of San Diego dive ops that are much better than diving off the Marissa, so when we’re ready to go back down there, we will be contacting one of the other (three) dive ops – two of which have already earned our trust.
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