Bad Weather Continued

The next day was not much better then the previous day. Most of the other dive shops were still not going out because they did not want to risk losing a boat like we did. (I think everyone on the island knew about our sinking boat before we made it to bed that night.) However, we wanted to assess the damage to the boat, namely the engine, and look for the two sets of lost gear and the other random missing items, like the spare tank, some weights, and masks and fins.

We hire a local boat captain and his boat to take us out there. Don't worry, we learned our lesson and did not tie the boat up, we stayed well away from the breaking waves. We sent in three divers, Trevor, the owner, Luke, the dive master instructor, and Justin, Luke's brother and the shop manager. I was in the boat as surface support to help spot the divers when they came up. With the large waves and the recent memories, I was rather nervous.

The three divers later compare the diving conditions as diving in a washing machine. The deepest that they go is about 15 feet because the boat sunk in really shallow water. Despite the horrible conditions, Luke was swimming along the bottom and noticed a small stream of bubbles coming off of the bottom. He swam up to find Jared's gear. He tested the regulator and checked the dive computer. After spending all night on the bottom of the ocean, everything still worked, and the computer still did not show the need for any decompression time. After about two hours of searching, they have found the spare weights, Jared's gear and the some of the boat.

At the same time, they sent another search team on land to see what they could find washed up on shore. They scrambled around on the iron shore and collected lots of pieces of the boat and the fuel tanks. At the end of the day, just about the only things not found were the engine and my gear.

This is what was left of the bow of the boat. It was still tied onto the mooring line. The knot had tightened so much that we had to cut the line to get it free.