EmptyTank
Contributor
I don't dive enough to have that issue occur. If I spend tons of money to go somewhere to dive and for some reason I get sick, I do whatever I can to get a refund. Otherwise I guess I am out of luck.
The cost of safety
- Thread starter Deefstes
- Start date
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UNOLS Research Vessel time is on the order of $10K to $20K per day plus all the other costs of the project ... it adds up fast.
The only dive I really remember making when I was not feeling up to it was in the Bahamas off of the Lab on Lee Stocking Key. We were aboard the Undersea Hunter and had launched the Deep Rover submersible about 12 hours before, Sylvia Earle was piloting it and she had planned a record setting 24 hour dive. I was not feeling well and had gone down into my bunk and crashed. The Operation Supervisor (Jim English) woke me up and asked me to come up on deck to hook the sub up to the crane, we were scrubbing the rest of the dive due to deteriorating weather. I asked Jim if someone else could do the recovery but he said that things were turning pretty bad, pretty quick and he wanted me to do it since I had the most experience.
I got on deck and we had swells running eight to ten feet. Sylvia had the sub at about 100 feet and we swung the the crane out over the water. I jumped in and swam to the "headache ball" (100 lbs. or so of steel with a hook and a strap on the bottom). I grabbed onto the hook and was alternately pulled clear of the water and dunked underwater by the roll of the ship as amplified by the crane's arm.
We maneuvered to the sub as it broke the surface, now I had to get the strap onto the hook on the top of the sub whilst preventing the ball from smashing into the acrylic sphere that the sub was made of. This was perhaps one of the most physically taxing and frightening things that I've ever had to do.
It took me many many attempts to get the strap hooked on, and with each failure I had to fend off the ball, by the time I'd made the hook up I was exhausted and if it had gone on much longer I don't know what I would have done, Sylvia's life depended on our getting the sub back aboard.
Anyway, I made the hookup and we picked the sub up. I stayed on the sub because I was afraid that I did not have enough energy left to swim to the ship's stern and I did not know if I was still strong enough to climb the stern ladder. As the crane took the strain of the sub, the acceleration put a small crack in the mounting face of the sub's forward hemisphere. This later cost $20K to fix.
One of the jokes Sylvia and I had about this incident was that I said that I knew she was as scared as I was since I could see that she had her camera in her lap during the recovery and did not take any pictures (she photographed everything). She maintains (to this day) that she was not at all concerned, she was just, "out of film."
The only dive I really remember making when I was not feeling up to it was in the Bahamas off of the Lab on Lee Stocking Key. We were aboard the Undersea Hunter and had launched the Deep Rover submersible about 12 hours before, Sylvia Earle was piloting it and she had planned a record setting 24 hour dive. I was not feeling well and had gone down into my bunk and crashed. The Operation Supervisor (Jim English) woke me up and asked me to come up on deck to hook the sub up to the crane, we were scrubbing the rest of the dive due to deteriorating weather. I asked Jim if someone else could do the recovery but he said that things were turning pretty bad, pretty quick and he wanted me to do it since I had the most experience.
I got on deck and we had swells running eight to ten feet. Sylvia had the sub at about 100 feet and we swung the the crane out over the water. I jumped in and swam to the "headache ball" (100 lbs. or so of steel with a hook and a strap on the bottom). I grabbed onto the hook and was alternately pulled clear of the water and dunked underwater by the roll of the ship as amplified by the crane's arm.
We maneuvered to the sub as it broke the surface, now I had to get the strap onto the hook on the top of the sub whilst preventing the ball from smashing into the acrylic sphere that the sub was made of. This was perhaps one of the most physically taxing and frightening things that I've ever had to do.
It took me many many attempts to get the strap hooked on, and with each failure I had to fend off the ball, by the time I'd made the hook up I was exhausted and if it had gone on much longer I don't know what I would have done, Sylvia's life depended on our getting the sub back aboard.
Anyway, I made the hookup and we picked the sub up. I stayed on the sub because I was afraid that I did not have enough energy left to swim to the ship's stern and I did not know if I was still strong enough to climb the stern ladder. As the crane took the strain of the sub, the acceleration put a small crack in the mounting face of the sub's forward hemisphere. This later cost $20K to fix.
One of the jokes Sylvia and I had about this incident was that I said that I knew she was as scared as I was since I could see that she had her camera in her lap during the recovery and did not take any pictures (she photographed everything). She maintains (to this day) that she was not at all concerned, she was just, "out of film."
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