Solo Diving in the ocean in your own boat?

[KathyV]

I'll take a risk.... It would be a hell of a retirement job.... And I'll leave the wife in the boat to watch me.... Or maybe SHE'LL leave me in the boat.... If you clear $75.00 bucks a job thats about $30,000 a year plus my IRA and SS... That would be about $85,000 a year for the wife and I.... Jim...

And you don't have to pay income taxes in the Caymans - but can you still get US SS? But remember what Mark Twain said about Tom Sawyer and whitewashing that fence!

"Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do...There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign."

But I have to admit, replacing mooring lines in Cayman sounds pretty nice! When we were in Egypt, I remember one of the divemasters telling me that his wife had created her own job. She loved it and was supplementing their income and could dictate her own hours. She bought a small boat and turned it into an "ice cream boat" and sold ice cream to the owners of the boats tied up in Sharm el Sheik harbor. So she was out on the water, close to shore, meeting rich people from all over the world, and looking at beautiful boats - and the job came with ice cream - sounds like my dream job! I wonder if it would work in Chicago's harbors during weekends over the summer?

But now that I think about it; if you left me alone all day on hot boat with stores of ice cream on hand; I'd eat up all the profits and pretty soon I would need a bigger boat!

 

[spoolin01]

I'm only guessing.... I think a line is run to nose of the anchor and back to the boat... When you want to lift the anchor the float ball is pulled down to the anchor by the float line ...Lifting the anchor out of the seafloor... Like I said just a guess....

Jim

Wait..... The float line is tightened to the anchor and floats straight up..... Then that line is used to remove the anchor set....

I've heard of having a second line w/float tied to the back end of the anchor so it can be extracted, but I've also heard of what I think is just running the anchor line through a stout ring attached to a big float. The anchor is pulled loose first, then the power of the boat is used to pull on the line, and the resistance of the float in the water allows the boat to pull the anchor up to the float, which is then retrieved across the surface. Not sure I got that right, just seen it described, but it's intrigued me as a means to save on hoisting the anchor by hand. It should also work for pulling traps from the bottom in a pinch.

 

[SubAquatix]

Use float balls all the time. Work Great. Second line is just wasted line.

How does an anchor ball/retrieval system work? - The Hull Truth - Boating and Fishing Forum

 

[Wingy]

This is probably not standard diving practice but I loved seeing dugout canoes in the Trobriand Islands moving along - the locals worked out if you could get hold of rope tie one end to ankle, the other end to dugout and you wont lose your boat.