Posted by Kendall Raine on November 06, 2000 at 12:03:35:
In Reply to: Open Letter to MHK posted by Max Bottomtime on November 03, 2000 at 15:04:23:
Max;
Your remarks about the Doria guys getting whacked despite using the right gasses, equipment and procedures is mistaken. Everyone of the 5 deaths on the Seeker in 1998 and 1999 were examples of doing things MHK and others have been complaining about on this board. If you'd been to the Doria you'd know that.
Seeker trips to the Doria, at least the ones I've been on, are basically an anything go's affair. Yes, Danny insists on using trimix if he doesn't know you to have experience diving deep air, but that's about it. The old salts regularly use air and typically use progressive penetration rather than a line. People diving trimix on those trips often use 30% He or less in their mixes meaning that END's are 150'++. This is particularly true as the trip goes on and people dump air on top of a partially depleted trimix. In 1995, I used a 19% O2 15% He mix which had been blown back twice for my last dive. Boy was that stupid! I remember finding a shot glass in First Class at 210' and giggling like an idiot-I was that stoned. As for buddy teams, well, they generally dive Frank's way. That is, you get in with your buddy and don't see him again until the hang-or not. Like Richard Roost in 1998 who got lost in the wreck diving solo. Finally, those guys like to dive heavy. Tools and steel stages mean lots of exertion even if you don't have a BCD failure. Their solution? Make yourself "streamlined" with bondage wings. For example, when Danny and JT recovered Charlie McGurr from the Promenade deck in 1999, they couldn't get him buoyant even with a full bondage wing. They had to dump his weight belt! This guy was a member of the crew and a former Green Beret!!! He was overweighted, got off the anchor line in a current and kicked himself to death.
The point is, the stuff MHK and John Walker have been complaining about-solo diving, low PHe's, deep air, bondage wings, steel stages, avoiding reels, poor physical conditioning-you name it, are all SOP on the Seeker. You think getting called a stroke is bad, see what happens if you try arguing with the NE wreckers about these practices. Worse, every time someone gets killed, they shake their heads in wonder at how such a string of bad luck could happen.
So please, Max, if you're going to take issue with MHK or somebody else about the optimal way to dive a particular wreck, don't bring up how the guys on the Seeker do it unless it's to make a point by negative example.
BTW, Wahoo is the same way-just check out their website-and I don't even want to think about Sea Hunter III.