Florida: Now That's A Yacht!

In Ft. Lauderdale we took a water taxi, which is highly recommended.

For $238, you get a pass that lasts all day and you can hop on and hop off at any stop from the downtown to Margaritaville and many points in between.

The kids enjoyed it a lot especially one of the stops we made.

It was lots of fun with the boat crew narrating the various sights you see, including the homes and boats of the rich and famous as you go by. They also serve a very generous rum and coke for $5 which makes the trip even more enjoyable.

So we passed by a certain yacht.

She's the Seven Seas, and she happens to be owned by Steven Spielberg.

To say that's a big yacht is an understatement.

This amazing luxurious super-yacht is 282 feet long complete with pool, helipad, a 30-foot sportboat and a 34-foot limousine boat and of course a huge 150-foot wide movie screen. It cost around $200 million to build and it can be yours for rent....for a bargain price of $1.5 million per week for 12 guests. Per the guide, that rental rate does not include the food, fuel, and crew tips for that week.

Rumors have it that Spielberg is now having an even larger super-yacht made at a cost of $300 million, as this one is apparently a little small for his needs. Good for him.

Dive 243 Union Lake To The A-Aron Boat

Quite a group of us showed up this morning to dive Union Lake.

Brandon, Chad and Fred showed up with scooters. The Jeff, Nate and me, the three of us without scooters kicked the dive off on fins before the scooters got in the water.

The water is getting colder. Here's a shot of the gauge showing 59 degrees at 30 feet, 19 minutes into the dive. At 44 feet, it read 56 degrees.

On the way to the boat I found a golf ball:

Just Dive It.

So we kicked out to the north boat, which is a pretty distant swim, and found it had been renamed:

Where did the A-Aron variation in spelling come from you ask? From here:

So here I am by the newly named A-Aron boat:

Here's Jeff and Nate at the boat:

We then kicked over to the pontoon boat and did some drills including out of air drills and valve drills and then headed back in.

After 67 minutes, at the end of the dive, you could say we were getting tired.

A darn good dive.

When Your Other Attempts To Change The Rules Sink, Play The Race Card

So, your boat doesn't meet the classification to race in the Detroit Hydroplane races? Most people determined to race would either plan ahead and buy the appropriate class of boat, or they might just enter in a race that has the class of boats they own for racing.

Not Jerry Bell of Detroit. He decided instead to play the race card: The Detroit Free Press: Detroiter Jerry Bell says Detroit River Regatta Association racist for not running his hydroplane class in Gold Cup

Jerry Bell calls it racism.

Officials from the Detroit River Regatta Association say that’s nonsense.

Bell, a 38-year-old African American power boat racer from Detroit, briefly disrupted the ABPA Gold Cup Unlimited Hydroplane kickoff event at Campus Martius Park on Tuesday when he loudly challenged regatta staff on stage as to why he couldn’t race on the Detroit River this weekend.

It’s not the first time Bell, who has competed in 5.0-liter hydroplanes in the past, has accused the DRRA and American Power Boat Association of preventing him from competing at the Gold Cup event.

So he's a regular user of the Race Card Express.

“The following year, he pulled the same thing. We let him run an exhibition on the river in 2009. What everybody needs to understand is that we run a lot of events … and this year we were going to run Grand National Hydros, and Jerry doesn’t even own a Grand National Hydro. We again couldn’t get enough entries in that class and had to cancel.

“It’s always a racial thing with Jerry. Look, we hire 400 volunteers from all walks of life for the Gold Cup weekend.”

Bell is now trying to pull the big guns of the race card into his farcical claim:

Bell said he contacted civil rights activist the Rev. Al Sharpton and the National Action Network in Detroit about his latest objection.

Meanwhile, Bell hasn't come out to play where races are held with his class of boat:

Said Weber, a former Unlimited Hydroplane driver:

“The rules are perfectly clear by the sanctioning body: He (Bell) has the opportunity to participate when the classes are on the race schedule. He hasn’t cared to do that at two events (Walled Lake and Waterford) recently.”

In other words, instead of entering and competing by the rules, Jerry Bell hopes playing the race card will trump the racing regulations. Pretty pathetic if you ask me, and rather a sad comment that his reality-free racial tantrum gets coverage by the Detroit Free Press.

Moving The Boat Pictures

David sent me the pictures of the Sunday Boat Relocation Project. Here they are for your enjoyment. I'm the diver in the orange gloves for this one.

1. Prep to descend:

2. The boat in its original location:

3. Deploying the bow tow straps:

4. Pulling the bow tow strap to get it in place:

5. James hooking up the tow straps:

6. Rise Boat, Rise!

7. The boat suspended at 16 feet:

8. Moving the boat:

9. Setting her down:

10. Removing the tow straps and lift bags:

Quite the fun experience, you don't get a dive like that everyday.

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.

That's one Titanic Map

Cool Technology.

Fox News: Full Titanic wreck site is mapped for first time

Researchers have pieced together what's believed to be the first comprehensive map of the entire 3-mile-by-5-mile Titanic debris field and hope it will provide new clues about what exactly happened the night 100 years ago when the superliner hit an iceberg, plunged to the bottom of the North Atlantic and became a legend.

Pretty amazing how the technology has improved enough that now, 100 years after her sinking, we can get a detailed map of the entire wreckage and debris field - two and a half miles beneath the surface.

Costa Crusing Disaster Response and Recovery Efforts

Since the Costa Concordia Cruise liner ran aground, Italian police divers have been combing the wreckage searching for survivors who may be trapped in the submerged areas of the ship.

You can see some of the pictures that show what the rescue and recovery divers have to deal with. Lots of floating debris and obstacles impairing their progress, not to mention the layout of a cruise ship makes recovery very difficult as the cabins and decks tend to look the same. It is very easy to become disoriented, especially as the ship has a severe list.

In short, the divers are going to have a very tough job making their way through the submerged areas to try and find anyone to save. It's going to take time to completely clear the submerged areas and each day lessens the possibility that survivors will be still living once their rescuers arrive.

It has been rumored that the captain left the ship before everyone had disembarked, and the behavior of the passengers and crew was rather substandard with panic prevailing and the crew not rising to the occasion but sinking into uselessness faster than the ship.

The Detroit Free Press: Michigan couple recounts escape from grounded Italian cruise ship

No ship workers were around, and a person on overhead speakers tried to calm passengers with claims of an electrical problem, Steve Ledtke said.

“To many of us, it seemed like the boat was going to go down, regardless of what they said overhead,” Steve Ledtke said today. “Once things started happening, all the staff was gone – they disappeared.”

The Ledtkes headed to a lifeboat, where they waited. Then another employee ordered them back onto the ship.

It was an hour and a half before they heard “abandon ship,” Steve Ledtke said. “Once we opened it up again, it was almost like a stampede, like a panic after the abandon ship announcement,” Steve Ledtke said. The boat was only supposed to carry 150 people. “It must have been 250 people in the boat.I thought we were just going to fall to the water there was so much weight. It jerked dramatically but then they lowered us to the water, and we headed to shore.”

In short, the members of the crew, by all witness accounts so far, badly failed in their duty to assist the passengers to safety.

Borepatch, writing on the response of passengers and crew during the disaster had quite an erudite point that is well worth reading.

Dear Mr. Concerned Boat Guy – You’re a Moron

Dive 184 at Union lake started much like any other dive.

Rob and I geared up and got in the water about 10:00 pm. In addition to our standard gear we carried a deco bottle to practice gas switching and passing the bottle back and forth.

About 10 minutes into the dive we hear a boat’s engine zipping by right overhead. We’re comfortably deep in 28 feet of water so while it is annoying to have a boat come by that close we’re safe from harm.

We have a dive flag flying in full compliance with the law, complete with a solid blue battery-powered lightstick attached as an extra (and statutorily unnecessary) warning device. Since lights tend to attract drunken boaters its efficiacy as a safety tool is questionable.

So after 45 minutes we surface about 20 feet from the boat launch and see a car and a truck pointing towards the water with their headlights on, which is peculiar

As we approach the dock, we see it is this post’s eponymous Mr. Concerned Boat Guy and an Oakland County Sheriff’s deputy.

Mr. Concerned Boat Guy then launches into a diatribe on how he called the Sheriff because he was on his pontoon boat and ran over our dive flag and we really should have a bigger light on it ‘cause he couldn’t see it till he was almost on top of it. He then states he could see our lights below.

We kindly point out that we were 28 feet down and our lights were moving around for a good 35 minutes after he passed us.

We point out that we're fully in compliance with the law by carrying a flag and go beyond it by putting a light on it.

Doesn't seem to help with Mr. Concerned Boat Guy.

He then says we should put a white light on it. We point out a white light tends to get washed out by the shore lights and it tends to attract boaters who proceed to run over the flag.

We also kindly point put that boats are suppose to remain 200 feet from the flag,

The deputy doesn’t say much during this exchange, but he seems to be in a decent mood and understands that we are diving in full compliance with the law. He finally says for everybody to be safe and heads off, as does Mr. Concerned Boat Guy. Sadly he doesn’t stroke Mr. Concerned Boat Guy for violating the law, namely running over a dive flag and busting the 200 foot radius and admititng to it.

We head back to our cars and it turns out that Mr. Concerned Boat Guy (MCBG) left a page long screed on my windshield that is amazing for its mix of self-righteous and stupidity, and it makes me wonder if he was tipping back a few during his boating excursion or if he's this naturally stupid 24/7.

“To whomever was diving in the DARK tonight!”

Yes, that us, and you were boating in the dark tonight with or without your capslock on, your point?

You almost got ran over tonight. I can’t understand for the life of me why you would dive at nihgt without having a lighted marker! Just so you know, it is impossible to see your little tiny blue light on your Flag in the DARK!

We did get run over, by you. Luckily we were 28 feet under you.
And again with the dark in caps, methinks MCBG never learned proper grammar. Look moron, you admit our marker was lighted. Why don’t you have a sufficient light on your boat so you can see what’s in front of you, dummy?

I was idling in a pontoon and we did not were not able to see your dive marker until we were right over top of you. I am not sure if you even knew how close we were to you, but I did see you flash your light under water once the boat was over top of you.

No, the heck you were idling. That was a running motor that we heard you lying sack. Yes, we knew you were 28 feet above us driving your boat like an oblivious idiot.

If you are going to dive in Union Lake or any other of the surroundings lakes please make sure that your location is clearly marked, especially at night. I do not want you to end up dead / or as a statistic of an unsafe / unprepared diver & I definatly (sic) do not want to be part of an accident involving any diver that is careless & irresponsible of their surroundings.

This is a bit like yakking on a cell phone, staring out your back window, ramming the back of a car stopped at a red light and then blaming the person that was stopped.

Look dumbass, we are fully aware of our surroundings and floating a flag in full compliance with the law. In this case it was you the unsafe / unprepared driver of the boat who was "careless & irresponsible of their surroundings". Quit blaming others for your own stupidity if you please.

Please remember that you are not the only ones using these waters & that there are many other people out here trying to enjoy the lake as well!

Right back at you dumbass. Please learn and remember what a dive flag means and share the lake accordingly. Please try to pay attention the next time you drive your boat in the lake would ya?

Thank you,
A concerned citizen.

You’re welcome.

Now please take a boater safety class as soon as possible and learn the laws of boat operation before you cause an acccident.

Also, please man up and leave your name and contact number next time you fancy leaving a page-long ignorant screed on someone's vehicle you irresponsible, unsafe, and pathetic excuse for a boat operator.

Why You Want To Stand Out In A Crowd, Especially On A Charter Boat

Be memorable so stuff like this doesn't happen to you:

Boat abandons Michigan snorkeler on Australian reef

The Detroit Free Press:

Australian safety officials say they’re investigating a dive boat company that accidentally left a U.S. tourist behind while he was snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef.

Ian Cole of Michigan told The Cairns Post he panicked when he realized the boat had left without him on Saturday. He managed to swim to a nearby boat and was not hurt.

The Charter Boat employee failed not only to have all returning snorklers sign in but also failed to notice a snorkler was missing.

The best head-count systems in the world don't work if they're not used.

Whenever you get on a charter, introduce yourself to the captain, chat with the divemaster or other crew and make a lasting and positive impression so they want to stick around and pick you up after the dive or other activity is over.

Michigan's Lakes are Still Cold and Lake Safety Matters

While the ice is off the lakes, that doesn't mean its safe to be casually jumping in the water, nor nonchalantly boating either:

Commerce Township man drowns after saving father in canoe accident

A 24-year-old Commerce Township man who helped save his 60-year-old father after their canoe tipped over in an Oakland County lake on Saturday drowned after the father got to shore.

Oakland County Sheriff's officials aren't releasing the man's name but said he was taking a canoe ride with his father around 5:15 p.m. in Hawk Lake in a newly purchased 17-foot aluminum canoe when he stood up in it about 100 feet from the shore and the boat flipped.

Sgt. Brian Lippard said the man helped his father hold onto the partially submerged side of the canoe until a neighbor on the lake heard their cries for help and helped get the father to shore. When the neighbor returned to help the 24-year-old, he had slipped below the surface of the 50-degree water. Divers recovered his body about 45 minutes later, Lippard said.

Neither man was wearing a life jacket and alcohol may have been a factor, along with the son's swimming ability, the sherriff's office said.

The weekend was nice and sunny and great for boating, and its likley many boaters didn't consider that the water is still darn cold. If you weren't wearing warm clothing and a life jacket you were in deep trouble if you fell in, as happended in this case.

Boating safety matters and life jackets are essentially safety gear, especially in small boats. Considering the temperature of the water, falling in the water can be a massive shock to your system, and hypothermia is a real possibility.

In 50 degree water, in under 5 minutes without protective clothing you will lose manual dexterity, including your ability to hold on to things. You'll be totally exhausted in thirty to sixty minutes and dead from hypothermia in one to three hours.

This was a sad but very avoidable tragedy, all the worse considering the safety was a short 100 feet away -- but after the system shock your body gets when hitting such cold water, and if the report is right about a lack of swimming ability and possible alcohol use, 100 feet may have been miles for all the help it could be. Darn shame, and even worse that if this was a new boat they mayn ot have known any better about the local conditions, and the basic fact that you don't go standing up in a 17 foot canoe unless you want to go swimming.

Especially now that the Oakland County Sheriff is suspending its marine patrols due to budget constraints, there's going to be both less help available for distressed boaters and less of a lid kept on the yahoos that contribute to unsafe boating, likey leading to more incidents this year.

Be safe out there on the lakes.

It's a Boat, It's a Car, It's Aquada!

It's a very cool Car / Boat amphibious vehicle that truly works.

Certainly the Aquada is the ultimate convertible.

Drive on in, the water is fine.
Push the blue land/water button as you drive down the boat ramp and as soon as the car reaches two feet of water, the wheels fold up under the wheel wells, the red and green navigation lights switch on and more than 2,000 pounds of thrust rumble in waiting.

Now if it came with a dive platform.....