A few years ago I had a salvage dive for a 28ft cabin cruiser in about 25 feet of water. It was the first year my father wasn’t there to dive with me so my uncle insisted that he dove with me to keep everything safe. He is in his early 50’s and has owned a restaurant and marina on the north end of the lake for over 30 years and that’s the area this boat sunk so he has probably dove this area for his own reasons over 1000 times, he also is a traveling diver so he is a very experienced and safe diver I trust him with my life and likewise for his life in my hands. We both had all gear and tools needed and a we had two dive torches a 300lm and a500lm (I don’t remember who had with torch).
The plan was to drop together then separate and do a zig zag search pattern till we located the vessel. Once one of us located it we would set off a dsmb. tide off to the vessel surface meet up then start the raise. Wether we found the vessel or not we would pop up every ten minutes to see if the dsmb was fired or if we needed to move our search. I located it surfaced he did shortly after for his ten min check in we went over our plan of attack got our cables off of the tending boat his job was hooking to the bow and mine was to hook to the stern. Visibility on this dive was less than 0.5inches. On this dive we both Encountered issues there were long dock lines tied off to every dock Cleat on this vessel. When I came up to the stern of the boat I seen the lines tided off to the stern cleats so before I started my rigging i cut theM and stowed them so I wouldn’t get tangled up in them I didn’t notice the lines mid ship as I was rigging my cables to the stern the mid ship lines floated my way and tangled around my tank and first stage then also tangled around some other part of the stern of the vessel so I was Essentially stuck to the back of the boat. At first I tried Singling to my uncle that was working the bow of the boat with my light Hoping that he would see it flashing at him and he’d swim over and cut me loose. He never came I kept my self calm pulled out my Knife and started cutting my self free, once I was free I finished doing my rigging and ascended. Once I surfaced he was already there and his face was white as a ghost. I asked if he was ok and what happened he also got entangled and had a hard time freeing him self. The difference was he Panicked and sucked almost all his air down. We both descended with al. 80’s at Roughly 3,300psi we located the vessel in about 15 min so we still had almost full tanks when we went to work I surfaced after rigging in about 30minuets with around 1800psi and he had about 100psi. We both tried Singling each other with our lights and neither of us seen the others light. If he needed another 5 minutes to free him self he wouldn’t have had the gas to make it out alive.
I learned several good things from this disaster of a dive ,one lights do you no good down there to try to get someone’s attention, 2 before you start to work make sure nothing can entangle you everything is trying to kill you down there. The ropes that got me were hooked to a cleat in front of the helm. I never would have thought they would have floated up then start to sink back down like a U shape wrap around something at the stern and then to me or more likely wrap around me then when I was swimming about they snagged to something on the stern. 3 I’m much better off alone neither of us could help the other.
All in all we raised the boat got paid and learned some valuable lessons. But things could have gotten a lot worse in just an extra minute or two.
Iv thought about static lines for when I take new ppl to my lake. But decided against it ,theirs so many things at the bottom like tree stumps logs cars unsalvaged boats pretty much if you can think it up it’s down there. I think it would just be a snag hazard. Theirs just one guy I take with me that is a newer diver he’s a good friend of mine he has the right Mentality (not easily panicked) and even though he is a newer diver his skills are on point and I stick to side like glue. If I was to take anyone else with me Iv met them at the dive shop I get a good background of them I ask the dive shop people about them and I dive with them first somewhere else then if they ask to go for a dive around here I bring them but like I said in my original post. Explain to them it’s a solo dive there is no one to help you.
