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Why does nobody talk about the risk of entanglement with unused lift bags at the dock?
I was working a salvage job in Port of Long Beach last month when a rookie left a deflated lift bag tied loose on the line. A tugboat wake sucked it under and wrapped around my harness valve. I got free but it took two tries. How do you guys secure your spare gear on the surface?
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jamesf417d ago
nah man I feel you on that. I had a similar scare up in the San Juan islands a few years back. I was prepping for a hull inspection and had two lift bags tied off on the dock cleats just barely floating. A random wake from a fishing boat flipped em under the pier and they got tangled in my tank valve too. Took me a solid 15 seconds to get out and my heart was pounding the whole time. Now I just stash em in the dive locker or tie em way up high on the dock rail where no wake can reach em.
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annaw737d agoTop Commenter
Yeah, "got tangled in my tank valve" is the part that made me cringe. That's a specific kind of terror, when a mundane piece of gear suddenly becomes a restraint. Fifteen seconds is an eternity when you're on the clock and can't breathe. Did you ever figure out if it was the bag line itself that caught the valve, or was it the valve's little plastic handle that snagged it? Because I've seen those cheap plastic knobs on aluminum tanks just snap off under tension, which is its own whole new problem.
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