Dive 209 - Rearranging The Underwater Furniture

So we all met this morning at Union Lake on a cold Mother's Day morning nice and early to get a dive in.

Jeremy, Jeff, Dave, Michelle and I were prepared for a standard practice dive but Chad, Brandon and James had another idea:

"Were going to go move a boat today"

Brandon had brought his two 500 lb lift bags and tow straps, the three of them brought their scooters and the plan was to move a large speedboat boat about 500 feet and get it on the line instead of its current location that was quite inconvenient.

So we were each given a job. Jeremy and I were to attach a tow strap under and around the bow, Jeff and Michelle would get the stern and James would hook it up while Dave took pictures. Then Chad and Brandon would come in with the lift bags after marking the spot where the boat was to go once it was mobile. Simple right?

So we headed for the boat. On arrival, we just hung around waiting for Brandon and Chad to come back and started doing a basic six drill to pass the time. Practice is paying off as my buoyancy was pretty decent.

Chad and Brandon soon reappeared and James handed Jeremy and me the bow strap. I unraveled it and then we got it under the bow and each went to either side of the boat. With a see-sawing motion we worked the strap farther in and under the boat and then we brought the ends of the straps to James for him to hookup to the lift bag clips.

Each bag, as before could provide up to 500 pounds of lift. There are two places you don't want to be when a boat is being moved: above it, or most especially beneath it, because if it slips from the straps, it is dropping straight back down.

So the boat lifted off after the bags were inflated, creating a massive silt cloud.

It's rather cool to see a boat rise off the lake-bed and then emerge from the silt just hanging freely in the middle of the lake.

The boat was stabilized at about 16 feet and the scooters were used to drive it to its new location and its now resting in about 30 feet of water along the mainline, about 200 feet away from another boat so it is in a much better location.

We moved the boat to its new location, dropped it in place and headed back.

The whole dive took 63 minutes and was certainly a fun and interesting experience.