Agate redux
Posted: Wed May 27, 2009 5:23 pm
I love stirring up a good hornet's nest and people feel compeled to throw some stones at me right now - like grumpy me did with Fishtiq and Mattley. So here goes...
2+ years ago I am forced to take a break from diving. I had a partial laminectomy at C6-7 and can't dive. I agree to boat tend for 3 friends who want to dive Agate Pass (sound familiar?). One of us had done it years before off a charter boat, I had not and neither had the other 2 buddies. We head over there in roughly Feb-March using one of the diver's 18ft RIB's (no it wasn't Steding's). JW (the owner) tells me, "there's not much gas in her, I'm trying to use it up so it doesn't go bad in storage over the next couple months". Ok no big deal to me, plan on.
So I'm dropping them at the south end on a massive ebb. The one diver who had done Agate before off a charter boat tells me "we had a 50min bottom time last time". Ok cool I'm good with that. "We got SMBs and we'll shoot them at the end, just come and pick us up if you don't stay exactly on our bubbles". Ok cool again. I didn't think to ask about a VHF radio or binoculars. There are no binoculars, but JW's cell is under the seat along with (I think) a handheld VHF radio. I didn't know and didn't think to ask about these things, seems like a straightforward dive down the channel why would I bother to ask? There's a little dive flag on the RIB's tube.
Plop, plop, plop we got 3 divers in the water not far from the red can buoy on the south end of the pass. I follow their bubbles for maybe 3 mins and then can't find them anymore. The wind waves are small but more than enough to disrupt bubbles. Ok no biggie, I had set my watch and knew when they went in. I slowly motored down to just past the dolphin (group of pilings) at the north end and waited.
At 40mins runtime I start to look for them.
At 45mins runtime I start really looking for them
At 50mins I am doing little donuts waiting for an SMB
At 55mins the donuts are getting bigger but I am also worried how much gas I have. I have never been on this boat before and don't even know the size of the tank, what does 1/4 mean??
At 60mins I am talking with my wife on the cell phone asking her advice on what to do next
At 70mins I call 911 and Kitsap County dispatch routes me to the Coast Guard in Seattle
Its about 2pm and will be dark in 2.5 hours or so. The following agencies respond in the next 20mins:
Kitsap Co. fire & rescue: 1 truck on shore, one boat coming from somewhere up north
WDFW 1 boat
State Patrol 1 boat
Coast Guard 2 boats, the helicopter from Port Angeles is busy up in the San Juans (sadly a diver fatality that day)
Coast Guard auxilary 1 boat
Total = 6 boats, one fire truck, and me
I am unable to talk with several of them due to the lack of a VHF. Coast Guard in Seattle is trying to keep me on the phone, my battery is dying. I have to yell back and forth with each responding boat seperately rather than communicating on a common VHF radio frequency. They all wanna know if there's any possibility they are underwater. At close to 100mins from when I dropped them, that seems doubtful. They wanna know experience levels, could all 3 have drowned? Seems unlikely but these responders are really getting me worried...
We manage to divy up into various search areas shouting at each other through the wind. I take the north shore of Bainbridge Island. 10-15 mins later I get a call back on the cell that my divers have been found by Kitsap Fire & Rescue near the Indianola fishing pier. RH had actually run out and flagged down the fire boat, thinking "Hmmmm they look like they are looking for someone..." As Kitsap's Fire boat transfers him to our boat they tell me, "all the divers wash up here on the ebb". I thank them and race off to pick up the other 2 (who are still on the beach) along with their gear.
They had surfaced after about 30-35mins. They had SMBs deployed and dive alerts on the surface. I had neither heard nor seen either, although they could apparently see me. After about 20 mins one of them had to pee so bad (no pee valve) that they had swam over a mile to shore and waited there. Swimming probably kept them from being drastically hypothermic, but they are exhausted from the epic.
Lessons learned the hard way:
Don't dive Agate on an ebb, its just not worth it. Once you are in Madison Bay is too big and there's too much water. Even little waves/wind attentuates dive alerts and makes even big SMBs (5ft) hard to see.
Don't go out with less than a full tank of gas, I probably would have drove along all the shores of Madison Bay if I had even known how much fuel I had. Not knowing the boat, I was paranoid of running out and being in even more trouble.
Other boats are big distractions, I probably would have noticed their SMB if it had been all alone out there and so many other boats weren't going by in front of it
VHF radio + binoculars are crucial peices of gear that you can't live without when you really need them.
Charge the cell phone.
Know your runtime. I wasn't looking early enough. If we had checked the distance against the current speed we would have known that 50mins was unrealistically long. At least I had motored the whole distance 2x (at least) but it never registered to compare the two.
The one positive from the whole day was the Coast Guard and Kitsap Fire were actually grateful I didn't wait until dusk to call them. They didn't charge us for our foolish mistakes either. I don't think we really needed that kind of punitive penalty anyway. The unbelievable stress on me as a boat tender, and the mile plus swim in full gear that JW, RH, and BP had to do was punishing enough for all of us. So if you think I am a bit harsh on epics or near epics, you can see that its born from having been there and done that already.
2+ years ago I am forced to take a break from diving. I had a partial laminectomy at C6-7 and can't dive. I agree to boat tend for 3 friends who want to dive Agate Pass (sound familiar?). One of us had done it years before off a charter boat, I had not and neither had the other 2 buddies. We head over there in roughly Feb-March using one of the diver's 18ft RIB's (no it wasn't Steding's). JW (the owner) tells me, "there's not much gas in her, I'm trying to use it up so it doesn't go bad in storage over the next couple months". Ok no big deal to me, plan on.
So I'm dropping them at the south end on a massive ebb. The one diver who had done Agate before off a charter boat tells me "we had a 50min bottom time last time". Ok cool I'm good with that. "We got SMBs and we'll shoot them at the end, just come and pick us up if you don't stay exactly on our bubbles". Ok cool again. I didn't think to ask about a VHF radio or binoculars. There are no binoculars, but JW's cell is under the seat along with (I think) a handheld VHF radio. I didn't know and didn't think to ask about these things, seems like a straightforward dive down the channel why would I bother to ask? There's a little dive flag on the RIB's tube.
Plop, plop, plop we got 3 divers in the water not far from the red can buoy on the south end of the pass. I follow their bubbles for maybe 3 mins and then can't find them anymore. The wind waves are small but more than enough to disrupt bubbles. Ok no biggie, I had set my watch and knew when they went in. I slowly motored down to just past the dolphin (group of pilings) at the north end and waited.
At 40mins runtime I start to look for them.
At 45mins runtime I start really looking for them
At 50mins I am doing little donuts waiting for an SMB
At 55mins the donuts are getting bigger but I am also worried how much gas I have. I have never been on this boat before and don't even know the size of the tank, what does 1/4 mean??
At 60mins I am talking with my wife on the cell phone asking her advice on what to do next
At 70mins I call 911 and Kitsap County dispatch routes me to the Coast Guard in Seattle
Its about 2pm and will be dark in 2.5 hours or so. The following agencies respond in the next 20mins:
Kitsap Co. fire & rescue: 1 truck on shore, one boat coming from somewhere up north
WDFW 1 boat
State Patrol 1 boat
Coast Guard 2 boats, the helicopter from Port Angeles is busy up in the San Juans (sadly a diver fatality that day)
Coast Guard auxilary 1 boat
Total = 6 boats, one fire truck, and me
I am unable to talk with several of them due to the lack of a VHF. Coast Guard in Seattle is trying to keep me on the phone, my battery is dying. I have to yell back and forth with each responding boat seperately rather than communicating on a common VHF radio frequency. They all wanna know if there's any possibility they are underwater. At close to 100mins from when I dropped them, that seems doubtful. They wanna know experience levels, could all 3 have drowned? Seems unlikely but these responders are really getting me worried...
We manage to divy up into various search areas shouting at each other through the wind. I take the north shore of Bainbridge Island. 10-15 mins later I get a call back on the cell that my divers have been found by Kitsap Fire & Rescue near the Indianola fishing pier. RH had actually run out and flagged down the fire boat, thinking "Hmmmm they look like they are looking for someone..." As Kitsap's Fire boat transfers him to our boat they tell me, "all the divers wash up here on the ebb". I thank them and race off to pick up the other 2 (who are still on the beach) along with their gear.
They had surfaced after about 30-35mins. They had SMBs deployed and dive alerts on the surface. I had neither heard nor seen either, although they could apparently see me. After about 20 mins one of them had to pee so bad (no pee valve) that they had swam over a mile to shore and waited there. Swimming probably kept them from being drastically hypothermic, but they are exhausted from the epic.
Lessons learned the hard way:
Don't dive Agate on an ebb, its just not worth it. Once you are in Madison Bay is too big and there's too much water. Even little waves/wind attentuates dive alerts and makes even big SMBs (5ft) hard to see.
Don't go out with less than a full tank of gas, I probably would have drove along all the shores of Madison Bay if I had even known how much fuel I had. Not knowing the boat, I was paranoid of running out and being in even more trouble.
Other boats are big distractions, I probably would have noticed their SMB if it had been all alone out there and so many other boats weren't going by in front of it
VHF radio + binoculars are crucial peices of gear that you can't live without when you really need them.
Charge the cell phone.
Know your runtime. I wasn't looking early enough. If we had checked the distance against the current speed we would have known that 50mins was unrealistically long. At least I had motored the whole distance 2x (at least) but it never registered to compare the two.
The one positive from the whole day was the Coast Guard and Kitsap Fire were actually grateful I didn't wait until dusk to call them. They didn't charge us for our foolish mistakes either. I don't think we really needed that kind of punitive penalty anyway. The unbelievable stress on me as a boat tender, and the mile plus swim in full gear that JW, RH, and BP had to do was punishing enough for all of us. So if you think I am a bit harsh on epics or near epics, you can see that its born from having been there and done that already.
awesome video, joe! man, that looks like fun.
