Small flares are easy to carry.
Posted on 10/05/2011 5:15:32 PM PDT by rawhide
Thank you, I thought they should have come by and thanked me but they may not have even knew who called in for them.
Just so. The main problem would usually be cold water. But I think the water is fairly warm off of Miami even now. And if they have wet suits on, that would help keep them afloat as well as warm.
I had to swim a mile and a half when I was a boy in camp, I think about ten years old, before they would let me sail on the lake. You just have to use a side stroke, and rest every once in a while, with your mouth above water. No swim fins back then, which would have made a huge difference.
Small flares are easy to carry.
They may not have known you rescued them and they may have needed medical care depending on how cold they were. In an emergency situation, there is not much chit chat. Those are questions you wonder about in the aftermath.
It’s great that you were so observant and that you cared, yarddog.
small flares under water?? no thanks
Water temp is in the low 80’s right now. Not hard to deal with.
Not a good situation but they would have had to be extremely stupid to die. Lots of ways to get rescued.
They make Dry Bags for storage during dives.
Those tourist dive boats are something I would avoid. On one our first dates, Wife, a PADI instructor and avid diver, took me on a “Discover SCUBA” thing. After we were in the water with the 90 percent Japanese group, the instructor wandered off leaving us with three Japanese tourist girls at about thirty feet depth. The instructor never did come back and the girls started getting panicky so my wife got them out of the water and back on the boat.
Same boat a couple of weeks later returned to the dock and offloaded their tourists. A couple of Japanese girls were getting hysterical at the dock. Their companion was missing. Seems the dive master (Japanese national) had either miscounted or neglected to count altogether and left the girl in the water when the boat headed back to the dock. The Captain (American, a friend of ours) Immediately powered away from the dock to return to the dive site (Tearing cleats out of the deck in the process because he did not wait for the lines to be cast off.
Too late. Another boat recovered the body before the first boat could return to the scene.
The Captain lost his job, his license and a lot of money defending himself in court. The Japanese dive crew just went back to Japan. The boat (And presumably the company) was renamed and operations continued.
Maybe. How close offshore Miami is the Gulf Stream? Get caught in that and you're going for a long ride.
I dive with boats I trust. The chances of an accident with a flare are higher than getting left behind.
I also don’t choose to be the last one in the water.
If I was going to be lost overboard, clinging to a bouy 3 miles off of Miami is where I would want it to be.
There are a LOT of boats in that area. Of course some of them are running drugs so ya takes your chances.
Many years ago, when my husband was a teen-ager, he and 2 friends capsized a small sailboat in the Severn River near Cardiff, Wales. A woman who lived in a house on the shore enjoyed looking at the river from the 'widow's peak' on the top of her home. She saw their sail go down and reported what she saw to authorities. A helicopter was sent out to search for the boys.
It took a long time and quite a few passes before they were spotted. Then they were rescued, hoisted into the helicopter, which proceeded to land on a village cricket pitch - in the middle of a game! They were given cricket sweaters to warm them as they were bundled off to a local hospital, really no worse for the experience.
It is wonderful when people look out for other people and do the right thing!
Their chances, even with fins, wouldn’t be good. The horizon , when you are looking at it from six inches above the water, doesn’t extend out to 3 miles. Maybe they could see tall buildings.
The tides and currents would have to be in their favor too.
They could get run down by a boat in the dark - ask the Huge Manatees.
They did the best they could - stay in position, hang onto something more visible than yourselves, keep a survival mindset. I applaud them.
The only other thing I think they could have done differently for themselves is wear a PLB. But, for an afternoon SCUBA trip, that’s a bit much considering all the other gear your are wearing. Plus, I don’t know of any PLBs that would be compatible with a SCUBA dive - would they have the required water resistance at depth?
I think the captain of the charter boat should be looking over his shoulder...
That is a great story. I bet those cricket playing kids had an exciting day.
Yes, and it made the local evening newscast, too. Unfortunately the boat was lost. ;(
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