Proper boat mooring

[simcoediver]

Many thanks to all of you for enlightening me on mooring guidelines.It looks like the BVI have a terrific system in place and their rules are well established.however the multiple bouys of different colors would be too expensive here as I believe P.O.W has to take them out before the ice forms.I would be more than willing to do my part in paying a fee of 20 or 30 bucks a year to help pay for the use of mooring bouys ,sort of a permit system to use the moorings similar to trail permits issued to snowmobiles for trail use.Some sort of system would need to be set up,I dont know,perhaps by POW themselves.

 

[Tom R]

The colored bouys have been taken out already and the next mooring day is slated for the Saturday before the May 24 weekend. For those that haven't read the Sept issue of Diver it worth a read. POW can be contacted by email through Big Jim, myself or even the President himself wplum@rogers.com for further information.

Glad to see the pufferfish is still alive I was getting concerned as nothing in a couple of days.

Tom

 

[divedude]

Groundhog246 once bubbled...
Well Said Jim.
If POW is putting in the buoys, then they're "private" buoys and POW can set the rules. If the charter operators are paying to moor, I think private boats should too. How well is it advertised? I'd suggest POW set out formal rules for use of moorings (duly voted on by the membership) and spring for some flyers for the dive shops and marinas and signs at boat launches. A sign along the lines of "Vessels on POW moorings must share the moorings by allowing a stern tie" would spell it out. Maybe you should have to be a member to use a POW mooring? At $20 a year a bargain. At the time they're signing up you could set out the "rules".

POW has rules in place for use of the moorings and most of the local guy have the flyers on there boats and I think at least on of the stores have the flyers. POW has boxes that they bought and suppled for donations, but one store is using it for a "dive for a cure" donation box. POW has been around for 21 years and been working as best as they can to achieve wreck preservation. my wife and I have been members for 11 years and for 8, one or the other has been on the executive. Donna was the president for three years and vice pres. for 2 years.

Payment is a voluntary thing and POW will not restrict who can use the moorings. All we ask is you respect our rules and our moorings.

What POW needs now is Divers and people interested in old ships to jump in and help with a membership and/or a willingness to do what is needed to be done. We only have a few members about 16 right now and we can only do so much.

We have the GLUE club in Kingston that I've been told has about 100 members and they have helped, they have a mandate seems to be the same as POW's and they have only been around 2 years not 21. I wish POW could find the same support but we have no store front to advertise in. If any one wants to help check POW or send me a PM. I'm the mooring director for POW.

 

[Groundhog246]

divedude once bubbled...

POW has rules in place for use of the moorings and most of the local guy have the flyers on there boats and I think at least on of the stores have the flyers.....Payment is a voluntary thing and POW will not restrict who can use the moorings. All we ask is you respect our rules and our moorings.

While I applaud your (POW'S) efforts, it's been my experience that people have less respect for FREE product or services. I used to belong to a group that ran family (parent/child) activities and heavily subsidised the kids to that all could participate. We found that if you didn't charge something, then very little value was placed on the activity or the people organizing. One example was a monthly roller skating session at a local roller rink. Admission and saktes were almost $5 (not much unless you're on a very low income with 2 or 3 kids). We'd get a small discount for having a group, Adults paid the discounted price and $1 each for kids, with the organization paying the rest. We tried it free a couple of times. Got more people out, but the ones that only showed up for the free event, were the ones who complained that it was too crowded, too loud, the skates weren't very good, why didn't we have free snacks and so on. Some came and skated for 20 to 30 minutes of a 3 hour session ("why not, it didn't cost anything" when I asked one lady).
On the other hand, if you charged , then they'd probably expect "better" moorings. So you probably can't "win".

 

[pufferfish]

Tom R once bubbled...
Glad to see the pufferfish is still alive I was getting concerned as nothing in a couple of days.

Just recharging the batteries after a week of writer's block
I was wondering the same about DMI after he was 'chased' off the board. I kind of miss his provocative posts and hope he hasn't left permanently.

Ok back to the topic or thereabouts.

Divedude, just curious are the Brockville wrecks under the umbrella of POW? I don't know how many dives are completed in Kingston each year but in Brockville we recently calculated on the back of an envelope somewhere about 30,000 dives (boat and shore) per annum. If Kingston was in the same ballpark and you can find a mechanism to collect a buck a dive that is a lot of $$ for POW.

Maybe set up a daily and weekly dive rate, and a season's pass like they have at ski hills. Just an idea but if you can get all the Kingston and Brockville divers paying a fee based on the number of dives then I think your funding problems would disappear. Think big man.

 

[Tom R]

Money is not a problem with POW, it's a membership doing the work problem.

Tom

 

[wetbehindtheear]

i believe that some of the moorings on brockville wrecks were placed there by the charter boat association for their use only. they can be pretty defensive about their moorings (for good reason - it appears that a number of people bring out their own boats to dive - unsafe, and not contributing to the local economy). from what i saw, there was always a public mooring in addition to the charter association's mooring. unfortunately, the charter assn's mooring isn't marked private or anything like that - perhaps more polite communication would be better than a simple order to get off the mooring. in this specific case, you'd think that since the boat in question took so long to get there that another minute to be polite/friendly wouldn't be too much to ask. ut:

i'd also like to encourage divers to contribute to the associations placing the buoys in their dive area of choice. i'm sure time and money are both welcome.

 

[divedude]

pufferfish once bubbled...



Divedude, just curious are the Brockville wrecks under the umbrella of POW? I don't know how many dives are completed in Kingston each year but in Brockville we recently calculated on the back of an envelope somewhere about 30,000 dives (boat and shore) per annum. If Kingston was in the same ballpark and you can find a mechanism to collect a buck a dive that is a lot of $$ for POW.

Maybe set up a daily and weekly dive rate, and a season's pass like they have at ski hills. Just an idea but if you can get all the Kingston and Brockville divers paying a fee based on the number of dives then I think your funding problems would disappear. Think big man.

No POW has nothing to do with Brockville's moorings. I think they are under SOS

As Tom said we need live body's to help not money........Well money helps too!!
We need members that get out and do things. I have heard many times in the past "Why doesn't POW fix that" or " Why doesn't POW have that mooring up" The main reason is, we only have so many guys to do the job's and we all have full time jobs and run dive business on the side and help POW....So what we need is people to take charge and do things. Its not that hard, in one morning Tom R, Dan McKay and myself fixed 2 moorings, put up 3 buoys and installed a new mooring line on a new wreck. Well Dan and I did, Tom R just swam around and took pictures

I had a boat pull up to me two weeks ago and tell me the mooring on the Comet was down and when would we (POW) be able to put it up.

There was 6 divers on this boat, they all had doubles and hang tanks and reels, lift bags, all the toys for the "in fashion" diver.
They started to tell me they wanted to do some technical dives and ask me "where are the deep wrecks."

My somewhat sarcastic answer was "If your so good go put up the mooring on the Comet "THAT's a technical dive"........... The mooring on the Comet is still down..... They went and dove the Wolfe Islander......

I still haven't had time to go put it up and will likelly leave it down now for the winter.
If you guys and gals on the board are interested I'll put a post in for POW's year end meeting date and you can attend and become members.

 

[Groundhog246]

wetbehindtheear once bubbled...
i believe that some of the moorings on brockville wrecks were placed there by the charter boat association for their use only. they can be pretty defensive about their moorings (for good reason - it appears that a number of people bring out their own boats to dive - unsafe, and not contributing to the local economy). .....unfortunately, the charter assn's mooring isn't marked private

If they don't mark it as private (something like "Property of Brockville Charter Boat assoc, member use only") then they're definitely going to get other boats tying off on it. We tied off on a couple of jugs on the Marquette and later the Lottie Wolf. Probably placed there by a local charter and if someone had shown up and said it was his, we'd have moved. We also had another boat show up and we tied him off our stern.

What exactly is "unsafe" about people diving off their own boats, instead of a charter boat?

 

[wetman]

Groundhog246 once bubbled...

What exactly is "unsafe" about people diving off their own boats, instead of a charter boat?

I was curious about this one too? And as far as the local economy, where do you suppose we eat out, buy gas, air, quite often stay at hotels etc... The only local economy we avoid is the charter boats.

steve