If anyone didn't look up the NYPost article yesterday, here's the new URL: http://www.nypost.com/10032000/gossip/gossip.htm *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced/forwarded outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
This may be a bit off topic, but when I used to live in Roanoke VA, a local sail boater managed to sail into a high tension line with his aluminum mast. He was knocked overboard into the lake which was around 200 feet deep and the color of Coca Cola. A friend on the local dive recovery team spend days looking for this guy, but he went straight to the bottom. Smith Mt. Lake is a fairly recent man made lake and the assumption was that the body was lodged in the pine trees on the bottom. A few weeks later, a woman and her son were fishing in a row boat, and our friend returned,torpedo like, to the surface at a fairly high rate of speed, went airborne and landed in their boat. The sound made by the gasses expanding by 7 atmospheres was apparently quite something to behold. cu *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced/forwarded outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
ralph said: <snip> <<<To set the record straight. Kayakers have found dead bodies here just twice in the last decade. This one and one around 1992.>>> <<<I asked Adam Brown, a professional diver who works the entire harbor inspecting piers and repairing them. He said he had run into them from time to time. I asked when was the last time. "Oh, in 1992 and it was under Pier 26!" That's the home of the Downtown Boathouse.>>> Ralph, et al: I read an interview with a NY diver a while back. Basically, the diving specialist has a hell of a job. He must descend to intractable murkiness to search for guns, knives and other "things". They have to wear wet suit gloves with their dry suites for "feel", and often preheat the gloves in a microwave to get a few extra minutes out of the normal 30" maximum down time in winter. There are 30 of them, covering 146 square miles of waterfront, and 576 miles of shoreline, ponds, lakes, etc. They go find or help suicide "jumpers" (usually off the Brooklyn Bridge). They have to search hulls of vessels for bags of contraband; try and find guys in little rubber boats hidden up in the rudder posts of large incoming freighters. They have weapons designed to work in the water, help detectives from 75 precincts, make use of the "Stokes Basket" (which is a device used to keep a body from falling apart during recovery pulling), and get tangled up below surface with old cars, shopping carts and bicycles (which can rip their suits and leak in bacteria rich goodies). Often at the surface, with masks off to communicate, little balls of turd float along and get into their mouths. They can get post-stress counseling, but most reject the offer as the counselors have no bloody idea what the guys do or go through. They do have great times, rescuing grateful families and folks from drowning, etc, but this is often offset by family members calling in a rescue half a hour after the victim goes missing. By the time they get there, they usually can grab the victim from underneath within seconds, but as the people waited too long, all hope is gone. They don't have a nickname for floaters, but do for used condoms: "Coney Island whitefish". BC'in Ya Doug Lloyd (whose idea of pollution here on the west coast is other boaters, not floaters) *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced/forwarded outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
Doug Lloyd wrote: > > ralph said: > > <snip> > <<<To set the record straight. Kayakers have found dead bodies here > just > twice in the last decade. This one and one around 1992.>>> > > <<<I asked Adam Brown, a professional diver who works the entire harbor > inspecting piers and repairing them. He said he had run into them from > time to time. I asked when was the last time. "Oh, in 1992 and it was > under Pier 26!" That's the home of the Downtown Boathouse.>>> > > Ralph, et al: > > I read an interview with a NY diver a while back. Basically, the diving > specialist has a hell of a job. He must descend to intractable murkiness > to search for guns, knives and other "things". A police diver figured in one of the most bizarre incidents that I know and still perplexes people to this day. It was in 1991 or 1992. A German TV film crew wanted to shoot footage of a rescue of a motorboater who falls overboard without a PFD and is in distress. The NYPD Scuba patrol was to act out the scene with one of their divers playing the role of the victim. This was a fairly young guy. If I recall around 30 years of age with several years of service as a scuba cop and from a long line of cops, you know, uncles, dad, grandfather, brothers etc all on the force. He himself had gotten commendations for some dramatic rescues such as the kind you mentioned in your email. One was in pulling some people from a sinking powerboat just a few months earlier. The scene was in the waters off of the Battery at the southern tip of Manhattan. He was wearing street clothing when he jumped in. He faked the role of the drowning person without a PFD by thrashing around in the water and then deliberately sinking as the script called for with his arms up. His fellow scuba team stood by as back up fully suited up in a patrol boat just a few yards away. They waited and counted. More seconds than they were comfortable with passed without him resurfacing. Two of them dove in. We are talking perhaps 20 seconds of delay and scuba professionals used to these waters diving in in full regalia to rescue a professional scuba fellow who was at home in these waters as a Navy Seal or real seal for that matter. The guy was gone. Completely gone. More divers came, both cops and commercial guys. Ferry traffic was diverted. The area was ringed with rescue boats of all kind both official and private. To no avail. He had disappeared. They searched through the night. The next morning he was found drowned at the bottom of the river in probably 50 feet of water and only a hundred feet or so from where he had gone under. To this day they do not know what happened. Remember that this guy was at home in the water, a regular diver in its murkiness, strong and young and while the water temperature was about 60F degrees this was something he was very used to. I have my own theory. Water in these parts do not move in a uniform way from surface to bottom. That area has currents that are out of synch with the East River flowing for 90 minutes in say a flood while the Hudson River is still ebbing just a few hundred feet away. Too, the water has different levels and different temperatures. Water on the top 6 feet layer might be heading in one direction while just below it might be going in another. The whole area is termed The Spider for its effects on motor and sailing vessels. Large commercial vessels such as oil tankers and tugs with barges are warned that they may be pushed in one direction at the bow and another at the stern and be, in effect, out of control. He may simply have sunk to a level where a lower current grabbed him and pulled him away; he got disoriented and drowned. Or he may have hit a submerged waterlogged piece of piling. Anyway, the filming was to show what happens to a person in the water who is not wearing a PFD. That this could happen to such a skilled scuba professional with all the swimming skills in the world and much water savvy and proven coolness under fire tends to make me cinch up my PFD tighter whenever I am paddling. ralph diaz -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Ralph Diaz . . . Folding Kayaker newsletter PO Box 0754, New York, NY 10024 Tel: 212-724-5069; E-mail: rdiaz_at_ix.netcom.com "Where's your sea kayak?"----"It's in the bag." ----------------------------------------------------------------------- *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced/forwarded outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
In a message dated 00-10-05 11:02:44 EDT, dlloyd_at_telus.net writes: << Basically, the diving specialist has a hell of a job. He must descend to intractable murkiness to search for guns, knives and other "things". >> Yeah, and our police divers had a helluva time searching the wreckage of ValuJet flight 597 that crashed in the Everglades in (I believe) '98. There were armed cops with rifles ready to shoot the gators (and water moccasins, or whatever). Instead of braving cold temperatures, they were wearing protective wear against contamination and it was in terrible heat. sandy kramer miami *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced/forwarded outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
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