Posted by Ken Kurtis on June 03, 2004 at 17:02:23:
In Reply to: Re: Some answers posted by Joe B on June 03, 2004 at 10:43:15:
JoeB wrote: "But you yourself had a not-entirely-dissimilar experience a few years ago, and while you did the right thing and aborted your dive, frankly it was the EPIRB that kept you from becoming the story."
Sort of.
First of all, I freely conceded from the beginning that this (my drifting away) was a situation of my own making due to my losing the group.
Secondly, although I activated the EPIRB, they hadn't activated their receiver so they never heard it. As I said in the story: "Three minutes later, I saw the boat heading towards me. Although I thought it was because of the EPIRB, in reality they had decided to come downcurrent one more time (they hadn’t activated their EPIRB receiver yet), certain that this was the area I’d be in."
JoeB: " . . . had the boat pulled anchor and steamed off for the next dive location, would there have been a sailboat full of boy scouts in the middle of the South Pacific?"
Probably would have been native Tahitian girls. I may have missed out on a good thing. They might have thought I needed mouth-to-mouth and tender loving care.
:-)
JoeB: "But I guess I don't understand the POV that downcurrent would be an illogical place to look for a lost diver. Seems exactly the opposite to me."
That wasn't my point. My point is that I would not have assumed Dan was drifting. In those circumstances, on that rig, given the things that were said during the dive briefing, my assumption would have been that he was dead, not drifting, so I would have started a search on the rig itself.
However, if we think someone's drifted off, yes, we look DOWNcurrent, not UPcurrent.
Again, I think the BIG thing a lot of folks miss is that this is really two sets of failures that everyone keeps trying to tie together when they're really independent of each other.
Ken Kurtis
NAUI Instr. #5936
Co-owner, Reef Seekers Dive Co.
Beverly Hills, CA