Posted by mike on April 10, 2005 at 00:09:58:
In Reply to: Re: Lost diver kept her wits and survived as she drifted away in Montere posted by Ross-o on April 09, 2005 at 22:14:36:
Actually, I have quite a bit of experience fishing and diving from small boats. There's a 21' Whaler in my driveway now. Basic, fundamental boating mistakes were made both in sound judgement, decisions and seamanship. The anchor dragged so bad that the boat could not be controlled. The "inexperienced" person left on watch had no clue the anchor was dragging and had no clue what to do to stop it. Apparently, no GPS, depth sounder alarms activated. No extra anchor was deployed(if one was even carried), The watch person did not know how to reposition the boat and did not know how to re-set the anchor, etc, etc, etc. Also, who checked/approved the weather, currents, tide, anchorage, etc., and who was so sure of the boats safe anchorage that they choose to leave an "inexperienced" watch person in charge? Additionally, sound, fundamental, basic diving practices were overlooked or simply ignored. Again, who was on watch?-an "inexperienced" person. Was there a drift line deployed? Was a game plan set up with who was 'watching' the boat? Why were they diving in such poor conditions? Why did it take 2 hours to call the Coastguard? Did she have a signal device or, just by luck, did she have a flashlite? I'll bet she didn't even have a whistle, cause she ended up yelling for the CG. No folks, lots of people on that dive screwed the pooch. We should not "admire" thier stupidity or encourage this kind of blatant disregard for standard boating and Scuba skills. Think about this. While the CG was deployed looking for these fools they were unavailable to respond to emergencies that were truly unavoidable. Besides themselves, who's lives did these fools jeopardize?