My first artifact recovery dive :)

[Kc1Scuba]

Yesterday was a beautiful day of diving.

It was my first large artifact recovery mission.

The day started out a little rough though. My buddy and I were a little out of sync at the beginning. Joel decided to go ahead and eat left over donuts, totally throwing off our routine. LOL. We showed up to the dive site at different times, and were always two steps apart.

This was my first artifact recovery of an item this large, so great detail was spent on procedure, and the tasks I was going to complete. Joel is great at what he does, and I wanted to take every chance I could get to learn from him.

Before gearing up, we did a quick check on the scooters, to discover Joel's scooter had sprung a leak. He then looked at me with a sad face, and began to ask me how we were going to deal with this as a team?...........With a smile on my face, I gave him the bird, and said "I have a scooter." LOL.

Joel was the first to get geared up. In the process of myself gearing up, I had discovered that my Jetfins had escaped. They broke out. They must have escaped during the night, and hid themselves on the shelf in the scuba closet where they belong. Don't you hate when that happens.

After informing my dive buddy of the missing gear, he turns, looks at me, and says, "Looks like I have a scooter." LOL

In the end, I had my fins delivered, and began to swim myself out to the wreck. I met up with Joel on site, who had already preped most of the gear. I finished my task that was assigned to me, and observed Joel as he finished up. It was time for the fun part to begin.

It was very methodical. Make the object nuetral, and then use the control bag to lift it.

Once on the surface, then it was a long scooter ride back in.

After reclaiming my scooter, we decided to do another dive.

I was going to make my final attempt at recovering the bathroom door handle.

The dive was very successful. We went home for great food and a nap. The night would end with the LH Scuba Club Holiday Party.

[Ben]

So, what did you recover?

Also, is this really DWW material or just diving?

[Kc1Scuba]

So, what did you recover?

Also, is this really DWW material or just diving?

Yes, this is DWW material.

In the end, our goal was accomplished using unconventional means.

It was an example of how I choose to dive, which I believe fits into the DWW philosophy.

[JS1scuba]

It was a 40 foot long main-mast from a sail boat. The mast was bent about 1/3 the way up, part of it was buried in the mud, the boom was attached, and there were steel cables all over the place. Lifting it had the potential of creating a lot of problems.

After years and years of recovering small and large items I am going to consider lifting anything that requires multiple bags and logistical problems as a "technical lift."

It's one thing to find an anchor on the bottom and blow it to the surface on a lift bag. That's a pretty easy task but when we start getting into large items that require multiple people and multiple lifting points it becomes an operation so to speak. If It was a commercial salvage job then it would be just that a commercial salvage job. But this was not it was an artifact recovery that had the potential of getting very ugly if things did not work properly.

I'll let Kyle lay out what the project was as this was his first lifting operation.

Cheers
JDS

[LCF]

Given the recent fatality of the diver working to refloat a sailboat, I'm glad both of you got the job done and came home okay!

[PeteJ]

It was a 40 foot long main-mast from a sail boat. The mast was bent about 1/3 the way up, part of it was buried in the mud, the boom was attached, and there were steel cables all over the place. Lifting it had the potential of creating a lot of problems.

After years and years of recovering small and large items I am going to consider lifting anything that requires multiple bags and logistical problems as a "technical lift."

It's one thing to find an anchor on the bottom and blow it to the surface on a lift bag. That's a pretty easy task but when we start getting into large items that require multiple people and multiple lifting points it becomes an operation so to speak. If It was a commercial salvage job then it would be just that a commercial salvage job. But this was not it was an artifact recovery that had the potential of getting very ugly if things did not work properly.

I'd like to add to this, when ever you are breaking things out of mud, control is extremely important.

I once pulled a mushroom anchor out of the mud in Blackrock Harbor in Bridgeport CT. I had got all the mud off of the disk and had around 500# of lift pulling on a 200# anchor and it still would not come up. So, I started to dig under the disk to break the suction. When it broke, the anchor headed to the surface very fast and the only thing that kept the disk from breaking my jaw was my left hand and forearm which pushed my head back as the disk went by. The bruise on my forearm was real black for a few weeks (this was even with a ¼” wet suit as padding) and my neck hurt from being snapped backward for a few days. I don’t want to think about what would have happened if the disk had caught me under the chin.

For long items, it is impossible to do a level lift with bags, one side or end will always come up first. So don’t try to do a level lift, so just plan to lift one end first. For big items, if you can, use a control bag for the lift. This is a bag that is less then 10’ from the surface and is the last bag to be filled. You place most of your lift at the item and then run a line to the control. Fill the bottom bags and then fill the control. If you have done it right, the control bag will be about 50-75% filled when the object comes up and it will only pop up the distance that the control bag is from the surface. Now you can tow to a shallower area or place another bag on the object and just fill it enough to get the object moving upward in a controlled manner. Doing this I have been able to just push an object up enough to get some air expansion and watch it slowly rise up. Or, you can try to ride the bag and dump air as it goes up wich can be done with one bag, is real hard with 2, and can’t be done with more then 2 bag unless you have another diver riding with you. But the last 30 to 50 feet will go fast no matter what you do.

Pete Johnson

[Dive-aholic]

I had the suction problem on an outboard I lifted. As small as it was I didn't think there would be much suction keeping it down. I kept adding air to the lift bag with no movement. When I finally jiggled the outboard, it started going up quite rapidly. I was able to grab the dump valve and stop the ascent, but it still made a rapid ascent of about 15-20' with me riding it! There were unsuspecting vict...swimmers on the surface...