Posted by Ken Kurtis on May 22, 2002 at 09:40:14:
In Reply to: My Second, My Friend posted by Captain Tim on May 21, 2002 at 21:33:32:
One of the great things about being involved in this industry is that you meet some interesting characters (and I mean that in a good way). And Dave certainly qualified.
Tim mentioned Dave's reputation with some as "Captain Grumpy." But if you went upstairs and made even the slightest effort to talk with him, Dave would become a fountain of information and sometimes, quite simply, you couldn't get him to shut up.
He'd regale you with stories of UICC #1, and how we've gotten smarter in the industry over the years, and how when they were bulding the addition to the breakwall, they'd inteneded to put the rocks here but instead . . . he had lots of stories and seemed to enjoy telling them.
And he was just curious about life in general. There would be a lot of times when he'd ask, "Do you know anything about . . ." and then inquire about some non-diving thing, usually ending up with, " . . . I'm going to have to investigate this a little further."
Dave was one of those guys who sat back and listened. He was happy to give an opinion, but only if you asked him or if it seemed appropriate.
I remember one trip on the GE shortly after Tim had put in the new toilets. We were to leave for Santa Barbara at 2AM. Dave usually arrived about a half hour before departure. Tim was sleeping on the boat, and the DMs & I were signing people in.
In course of the evening, around 12:30AM, we thought we smelled smoke. (Never a good thing on a boat.) We opened a hatch and it seemed like the smell was coming from the engine compartment. We rousted Tim, who discovered that the new toilet holding tanks had overflowed, shorting out something, which burned through a hose that ran the fire retardent system. No system, no trip.
Tim tried to see what he could do but it seemed impossible to fix on such short notice. It seemed the only thing to do was to cancel the trip. But then Dave showed up. Tim told him what happened and that we'd have to cancel.
Dave said, "Well, yes Tim, you COULD do that . . . Or you could take the hose off the back-up generator and put it into the fire retardent system to make it operational again." Tim said, "What?" Dave said, "Yeah, when they built the boat in 1978 they talked about this type of thing so they made it so you could switch these around if the need ever arose." Tim said, "I didn't know that." And Dave said with a perfectly straight face, "Yeah. So you can switch the hoses and we can go. Or, you can cancel the trip. Whatever you want to do, Tim. It's your boat."
Great guy, DRY sense of humor, and a man who will be missed. But as I said to Tim last night when he called and told me of Dave's passing, at least we'll have a lot of good memories of Dave and in that sense, he'll never leave us.
Ken Kurtis
NAUI Instr. #5936
Co-owner, Reef Seekers Dive Co.
Beverly Hills, CA