Diving on moorings

Kelpie

Kelpie

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Any scuba divers lurking on here? I was just wondering what sort of expense would be involved in getting trained and kitted up to a standard where I could do short dives on my mooring, to inspect it and replace shackles etc. So we're talking max depth of about 10m, and staying in the one place throughout, if that makes any difference.

I've already got a wetsuit and mask that I am happy to use for very brief inspections under the boat, but I guess those are the cheap bits of the kit...

I would just pay a diver to do the checks for me but a) I don't know any and b) nothing beats seeing things with your own eyes.
 
Kelpie said:
I would just pay a diver to do the checks for me but a) I don't know any and b) nothing beats seeing things with your own eyes.
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And c) as soon as money changes hands, the HSE get very interested because there are all sorts of safety regulations that apply to commercial underwater work which leisure divers are not equipped or qualified to comply with. Not to say that there are no sport divers who'll have a look at your mooring for a few quid in cash, but an awareness of this fact might colour the manner in which you ask the question.

I haven't been into diving for about 15 years so probably not best placed to advise on the original question. Any course you do will emphasise the importance of having a buddy (diving alone is considered a no-no by most, or at least solo diving is seen as a specialised activity) which is probably awkward as far as your mooring inspection plan is concerned. Personally I don't think popping down for a quick look at a mooring at 10m is unduly dangerous in water that you'd be willing to swim in (thinking of currents etc), but a lot of divers will suck their teeth on principle.

Pete
 
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Kelpie said:
Any scuba divers lurking on here? I was just wondering what sort of expense would be involved in getting trained and kitted up to a standard where I could do short dives on my mooring, to inspect it and replace shackles etc. So we're talking max depth of about 10m, and staying in the one place throughout, if that makes any difference.

I've already got a wetsuit and mask that I am happy to use for very brief inspections under the boat, but I guess those are the cheap bits of the kit...

I would just pay a diver to do the checks for me but a) I don't know any and b) nothing beats seeing things with your own eyes.
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When I started diving in 1981, the only training was to be warned not to hold breath while ascending. Off we went, and the third dive in my logbook was to 32m.

For better or worse, diving has now evolved into a multi-million pound industry and there are many institutions and people with vested interest in the diver training industry who will tell you that it is essential to go on a training course and get "certified".

What you could do is go along to your local BSAC club and do a bit of pool training and an open water dive or two. There would be no need to do the whole sport diver course if you just want to pop down your anchor chain occasionally. You wouldn't really even need a buoyancy compensator - just an 8l bottle on a back harness will do, a regulator and an SPG (pressure gauge). If you get a bigger 12l bottle you may find you need a buoyancy compensator. If you're just diving to 10m or so you will be getting short of air long before decompression sickness ("the bends") becomes an issue, so you won't need tables or dive computer. Just remember to come up slowly and not hold your breath. There is a strong culture in the UK against solo diving so you will need to keep quiet about your intentions.

You might find you quite enjoy diving. It fits very well with sailing - whenever there is no wind, I dive off my boat. Most of my diving for the past twenty years has been solo-diving, and it is no more dangerous than buddy diving if done with correct equipment and planning.
 
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I'm with Ric. I read the books and bought the kit for shallow diving. Used to lay moorings and gaze at creatures a bit. Started in '70, but not any recently. Always alone, and aware of the problems..
 
Diving is a great recreational activity and complements sailing well, in my view at least. It's well worth looking into getting trained and buying equipment. I'd recommend the BSAC route, having been a member for almost 30 years. Look at their website, find a branch near you and pop along one evening for a chat.

Many BSAC clubs would probably take a look at your moorings as a training exercise but I'm sure that beer tokens would be appreciated.

What's the nature of the sea bed? Visibility van reduce to zero very quickly by stirring-up the bottom.

I've dived fresh water moorings for a dinghy club and cleared a few props fouled with nylon monofilament line. As recently as two weeks ago I had a look under a friends boat in the vain hope of finding something dropped overboard, but to no avail. The viz reduced to zero in seconds and all I could do was to conduct a fingertip search. Diving in zero viz is not for the faint hearted, either.
 
LadyInBed said:
I stopped diving around 1978, I kept my kit to use as you envisage but over the years equipment needed replacing and cylinder testing requirements became more stringent so gave it up.
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Might be an idea to buy one of those surface pump kits. Hooka? Simple compressor with a tube and mask.

Digress: First read about these in 'Ordeal by Water' by Peter Keeble. A WW11 navl bomb disposal guy
They used standard kit diving pumps with gas masks to disarm ordinance in the Med. A good read, esp as he originally volenteered for special duties as he was bored.... Different era.
 
I have a miniB system: probably the salesman at the boat show saw a mug (me) coming. But I did do a PADI course for their minimum qualification not really because I respect paper but because I thought that I might as well get some practice.

I think having the dive kit on board is potentially useful, certainly for inspecting moorings. 10m is about the limit I'd like for the miniB system, or for solo diving come to that. Cost about £600 new (but for that price I got the fancier version with dual DVs etc).

Course cost iirc about £400 but doubtless you might find cheaper.

There is consensus that BSAC is better than PADI. Well, it is much better I believe in the thoroughness and level of its training, but on the other hand (a) you probablly won't need that for your mooring inspections so don't spend the months in cold and dark gravel pits doing the training, and (b) BSAC is almost completely unknown abroad. Unless and until BSAC start to get their quals onto lists, let alone recognised, in other countries you're better off with a PADI qual imho. I say this with some experience: my sailing partner is a BSAC 'dive leader' and had dived hundreds of times all over the world, is nitrox trained etc. I've dived a handful of times and have PADI 'open-water' (the lowest qual). Yet it's me that has to present a certificate if we want to get a bottle filled or go diving when abroad. BSAC gets 'que?' and a shrug. Sad but true (BSAC members on here please do something about this! Write to the bufties in charge and demand an international publicity drive. It's just so British to be smug about how our system is better while meantime foreigners beat us in the real world despite an obviously inferior system.)
 
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Kelpie,

just a word of caution; a while ago a bloke was drowned while swimming underwater at East Head anchorage in Chichester; he got the anchor warp or chain wrapped in a turn around his leg, then when tension came on it he couldn't free himself...

Not saying its likely, just the sort of reason why buddies are useful, and strongly recommended.

If there are other moorings near yours, or a harbour authority, maybe they have diver contacts, or how do they maintain their moorings ?
 
Kelpie said:
Any scuba divers lurking on here? I was just wondering what sort of expense would be involved in getting trained and kitted up to a standard where I could do short dives on my mooring, to inspect it and replace shackles etc. So we're talking max depth of about 10m, and staying in the one place throughout, if that makes any difference.

I've already got a wetsuit and mask that I am happy to use for very brief inspections under the boat, but I guess those are the cheap bits of the kit...

I would just pay a diver to do the checks for me but a) I don't know any and b) nothing beats seeing things with your own eyes.
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Pretty much what others have said, but given your locale I'd look for a local SSAC club (Scottish Sub Aqua Club).

SWMBO and I were instructors .. but family arrived, and tanks needed to be tested, and dry suit seals started to perish, so I've lost contact with currently active divers.

It's worth getting the training; you need to know how to sort yourself out when it goes wrong (which it will, with zero visibility at 10M when you kick up the silt, and your buddy, if any, can't see you).

A club will normally have gear they can lend you while learning, so you can try it out to see if it's for you.
 
Thanks for all the replies, and I do appreciate people for not just giving the obvious 'go and do all the courses' answer.

FWIW, I used to paraglide and I think there may be parallels between the two sports. It's perfectly feasible and legal to go flying without being part of 'the system' but when you weigh up the value of your life and the risks involved it seems daft not to do at least a bit of training.

So if I could use my existing suit and mask, roughly how much am I looking at spending on the rest of the gear?
 
I appreciate that you are just making a casual inquiry & that is understandable, but one has to ask -What are you actually trying to achieve?
In our area we get our moorings lifted as a group at a cost of £ 50-00 per mooring & placed for the same cost. I cannot imagine taking off a shackle, as you suggest, underwater, along with mousing & then using a large pair of stilsons, or similar, to tighten the pin etc etc. If the chain needs changing that will need a lift surely.
Generally a 19mm chain will last 3 years, or 4 if it is a small boat, & tackle under the buoy more often but can be done from a small launch. Depending on where you are longevity of gear will vary but you will have an idea by talking to other mooring holders. If you are on a group of private moorings do they not deal with their moorings collectively?
So by the time you have invested in the gear & time & found you need to change something after 3 years you still need to lift it. So you may as well have done that anyway.
Of course if learning to dive is being done for other reasons then that is a different matter but you do not actually say that, Other than suggest looking at the underside of the boat which can be done with a cheap camera on a pole. If the water is murky then you are on a loser before you start
 
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Things are a bit different up here. There are two other yachts moored nearby, belonging to friends of mine. No harbour authority, no club, etc. There is a fish farm who laid the mooring for me with their workboat, but that boat is no longer at that site and anyway I don't like asking too many favours off them, they are generally quite busy.

Wanting to see the mooring gear with my own eyes is really about reassurance. You might be right that swapping out shackles underwater will prove too difficult, but I would like to know what state the gear is in before I go cap in hand toth e fish farm to lift the whole kaboodle.

Re: visibility, this could definitely be a problem, as the bottom is quite soft mud. I suppose I could go down on a first dive, attach a float to the part I want to inspect, and then dive a second time when the tide has risen and the mud has settled, and hopefully the gear would be held above the bottom. Just thinking out loud on this one...
 
I hold instructor qualifications from both PADI and BSAC. They are just two of a bewildering number of diver training organisations but all of them are basically offering the same training: the major difference between PADI and BSAC is that PADI is a commercial organisation, which will deliver training when it best suits the paying customer, whereas the majority of the BSAC training is delivered via volunteer instructors according to their timetables. Thus, a PADI school will deliver their training over the shortest possible time because time represents money. Conversely, the BSAC branch may take several months to deliver essentially the same training: that's because the branch will teach each element of the training just the once in each cycle, miss that lesson and you're stuck until it comes round again. You pays your money and takes you choice.

Diving on a mooring can be a challenging business, even for an experienced diver. It may appear to be a simple matter to follow the mooring chain down to then block, check out the shackles and swivels, do any work required and resurface. However, if the bottom is muddy, visibility will rapidly reduce to zero, making it difficult if not impossible to check the condition of the gear. Any current will improve visibility but will make maintaining position difficult. If you've not used tools underwater before, it can be entertaining actually using them because you're effectively weightless: using a spanner can result in you turning, not the nut or shackle pin. Loosing visibility can also result in disorientation. It's not nice discovering you're no longer sure of which way is up... I'm not saying don't do it, just take things gently and be prepared to abort the dive sooner rather than later if things start to go wrong.

You'll need as a bare minimum an air cylinder (I'd suggest a 10 litre one), a regulator equipped with a pressure gauge, a buoyancy control device (BCD) which will help you to control you buoyancy as you dive deeper and will provide a method of carrying the air cylinder. You'll need a weight belt and weights, as the wetsuit and the rest of the gear have a degree of inherent buoyancy which has to be overcome. That lot can be picked up for a somewhere in the region of £450 or so.

Given that you should have the regulator serviced annually, and the cylinder tested every two and a half years, it may work out cheaper to have someone do the work.
 
Do you actually need scuba gear to inspect a mooring at 10m? I appreciate if you need to spend time down there actually trying to change things fair enough but if all you want to do is go down and check the condition of a shackle can you not manage that with just a mask, snorkel and decent set of fins?
 
Triassic said:
Do you actually need scuba gear to inspect a mooring at 10m? I appreciate if you need to spend time down there actually trying to change things fair enough but if all you want to do is go down and check the condition of a shackle can you not manage that with just a mask, snorkel and decent set of fins?
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I've free dived the mooring before and was quite surprised how little working time you get. Maybe if I did it more often I would feel more comfortable under the water. I was able to get down to the swivel but the ground chain would be impossibly, IMHO.
 
I think 30' is too deep.

Long story short, when young and fit a friend and I recovered a fouled anchor for someone - in 20' of fairly clear water.

I pulled myself down the chain but couldn't do it, my ears wouldn't equalise and the pain was excruciating.

My chum was much more used to snorkelling and diving ( not with breathing gear ) and he managed it, but it was a struggle.

Especially as the episode with the chap drowned by a turn around his leg had just happened, so when the chain shook violently I thought he might be in trouble so I did the only thing I could think of and paid out some chain so if he was trapped he could free himself...

Eventually he burst out of the water like a Polaris, swearing profusely; the chain shaking had been him pulling himself up it with the anchor over his shoulder, so he was unimpressed when he found himself going back down as I paid it out. :)
 
I understand you probably dont want to do a whole load of course for a quick mooring dive, but that mooring dive is going to be cold and likely to be in marginal visibility with potential strong current. As a newbie id be very wary of grabbing some gear and heading off without at least some basic training especially if there is a chance that you have to sort something out down there.

Also be wary of buying the entry level gear, lightweight weight regulators have an entertaining habit of freezing in cold water when worked too hard.......
 
Yes I'll try not to be naive about this. As I said above, it's a bit like paragliding in that whilst you can go and do it without any training, it's not a very sensible route. And the consequences when something goes wrong can be very nasty.

Hopefully the regulator won't be freezing in the temps I'd dive in- I've only got a 5mm wetsuit after all. The idea would be to do an end of season check, when the water is hottest (a relative term I admit).
 
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