A hundred years after an horrific November gale sank boats all over Lake Huron, a bunch of guys get in a boat to go dive into Lake Huron in November because...
...
...because I'm not sure why, actually.
But anyway, with fifteen-foot waves getting ahead of the bilge pump, common sense eventually prevailed and they went back someplace warm and dry.
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18 comments:
I'm betting there was a "hey, hold my beer..." in there somewhere.
From back when I did some diving, I seem to remember there being two types: the ones who worried about details(such as "SCUBA doesn't mean I can swim five miles to shore through a storm"), and those who decide they're damn near nine feet tall and bulletproof.
Guess which ones generally make the news?
Take it away, Gordon Lightfoot:
The lake it is said
Never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy..."
He was singing about Lake Superior, not Huron, but under the circumstances I'd say the song still applies...
--Wes S.
I've been sea sick twice: the first time was riding an 11m RIB through the outskirts of a hurricane. The other was on a night dive during a fairly mild storm off the coast of Guam.
Anyone diving in 15 ft waves has a death wish.
One of the places* I took scuba lessons has a history of divers being lost, just trying to get out of the water, in less than perfect weather conditions. 15 ft waves sounds a bit risky to me.
*Monastery Beach, CA
Tam: Thank you kindly for the link.
Yeah, we weren't expecting 15 footers forecast was for 5-7 or so. They developed after we hit the lake and the wind decided to shift from the west to the north and proceeded to kick our um, tanks.
This is why you don't go dive the Great Lakes in November.
Wes S.: You never, ever, sing that song on a boat that's on the Great Lakes, very bad luck. But we did start humming the Gilligan's Island theme song after a bit.
In other news, I can attest that Dramamine rocks, no sea-sickness for me in all that.
A good try to touch the hull 100 years to the very day after she sank, and a good reminder that there was a reason she sank that day in November.
Great response, Aaron.
Look, friends-- we all will die eventually. Taking on a certain amount of assigned risk just means that you'll have more to look back on. The vast majority of divers aren't nuts; they just utilize special skills and equipment to go further into a hostile environment for longer than the rest of us usually do. As such, they get to experience some nifty sights that most of us don't get to experience first-hand.
Diving looks pretty sane, against my jaunts skydiving and firefighting in an SCBA.
Awww. Wes beat me to it!
Who Dares Wins, Aaron...I keep telling you that. Adventure is the spice of life.
So THAT'S why I've been hearing Gordon Lightfoot all over the place.
Amazed they made it back... And sooner or later they won't!
I remember waking up in my nice warm bunk in the off-crew barracks at Sub Base New London to hear the chant of "I wanna be a Navy diver!" I'd huddle over to the window with my blankets around me and see the latest Scuba Diver class, four to a telephone pole,in green coveralls and tennis shoes, out for their 4 am jog, prior to swimming to Long Island and back before breakfast. In February. So I would go back to bed and reflect that compared to Divers, submarine sailors were relatively sane.
Will, Monastary beach looks quite a bit nicer than where I got my first Rescue Diver cert.
That didn't pan out due to FD snafu so it got switched to PADI.
As a PADI instructor... that looks like a great big nope for me. I've dived in 3 foot waves and getting back on the boat then is a little tricky. 15 means I don't go in the water in the first place, heck anything over 5 and I'll demure. 5-7 feet forecast means "count me out on this one guys".
On the other hand I'm in the process of making plans for diving with whales, sea lions, mantas, dolphines, sharks, squid, etc in Baja Mexico around february, maybe I'll see some great white sharks? Non-cage dives. Oh and nightdive in humboldt squid territory may happen...
Km:
That's the problem. When the weather is good, I'm told it rates as one of the top three diving locations in the world. However, if it turns just a bit, the conditions get very hazardous, very quickly.
The first time our class showed up there, the instructor would only allow us in the water sans tanks and belts. Said waves were too bad for gear. We went out a short distance and free dived for handfuls of sand, blind. Couldn't see your hand in front of your facemask.
We thought his instructions on how to exit the water were a bit extreme. Not hardly! I think rule one was don't wait 'til you're tired to decide to leave the water, or you may not make it out at all.
The dune/beach slopes into the water at about 45 degrees, there is a hell of an undertow, and a cross-tow, and waves, and it is COLD (probably due to the undersea canyon that ends there). It takes multiple wave cycles to make it high enough up the slope to get out of their reach, even on a good day. The technique is called the Monastery Crawl.
The instructor explained that on a similar day, with conditions just a little worse, he didn't allow any students in the water. Classes on either side of his location that day both lost students trying to exit the water. It's not uncommon to find tanks and belts abandoned in that area, according to the dive shops. This was early 80's.
So, did you not have the camera out during the bad part of the storm? Or did it just not do justice to the conditions?
Because nothing I see in the pics is 3 to 4 feet, even, much less 15 feet...
I was out in 9 foot seas on the 21st of September, BTW. Not fun.
That being said, my boat's bow is self-bailing, so I can submerge the entire thing up to the top of the windshield without doing any harm. Didn't even get any water in the bilge at all. If you were overpowerng your bilge pump, you must not have a self-bailing bow? Is that right?
The pics sort of looked like it, anyway.
If so, may I suggest that you stop going out in seas any taller than 3 feet or so? You really have no business being out there without a self-bailing bow unless the weather is fair to middlin at worst...
I respect your drive and the risk you took, but I don't think that you had any business being out there without a closed bow boat. This coming from a guy who runs Hell's Canyon in my jet boat every Boxing day for fun (it is usually less than 20 degrees outside, and I'm running class IV whitewater...) O!
Goober,
I don't know if Aaron's still tracking comments over here; you may want to ask at the linked post?
It never ceases to amaze me how so many people will underestimate the Great Lakes. Oh well. I'll chalk it up to Darwin when Huron follows Superior's example and doesn't give up her dead.
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