In Reply to: VHF Radio Stories - Ever HEar Something Funny? posted by tleemay on January 02, 2007 at 01:45:45:

Last Summer. Catalina. Somewhere around Eagle Reef. Three of our local dive boats involved so I'm not giving up the names in order to protect the guilty. Anchored in kind of a triangle about a quarter mile apart from what I could gather from the lengthy conversation.

Listened to two dive boat captains debating why two divers had surfaced so far away from the boat they were trying to swim back to. Debate went on for a while because the divers were swimming against the current trying to get to the third boat in the area.

Boat traffic in the area picks up so now the captains get concerned enough to get baywatch heading that way after a couple of boats pass by the divers. Boats going by were nice though- when the divers waved at them they waved back.

This goes on for a while longer with a few more near misses and the captains wondering why the third captain does not do something to go rescue his folks. They keep trying to get the captain of the third boat on the air with no luck.

Baywatch is enroute but a distance away.

A private boater suddenly figures out that somthing is amiss and stops to help the two divers. He picks them up and runs them over to the third dive boat. That's when they figure out that they spent that whole time trying to get to the wrong dive boat and they should have been going to the down current boat with the captain who had been on the air the whole time wondering why the other captain wasn't doing something to go get HIS divers.

Baywatch was sounding a little cranky by the time the whole thing was over. I guess the moral of the story is that having a chase boat might have been a good thing.