Feature Dive - Chumpon Salvage II

[Brink15]

After the first trip out to the wreck site I was not overly enthused about returning. I actually passed on the next trip and let another instructor take my place.

When the second group returned, they were all very upbeat. They had surveyed the wreck and come up with a plan that had some probability of success.

The plan was to make at least one more trip back, this time to set up the salvage. The boat would be raised by means of mooring lines wrapped around the sides of the ship and tied to make an eye at the end. Another mooring line would be threaded through the eye and attached to two vessels on the surface. These boats would then haul ass and hopefully tug the wreck off the bottom.

Now, this plan did not sound like it had a "high probability of success" to me. I had to weigh my interest in keeping the dives safe and my lack of confidence in the outcome. I guess the fact that I had yet to see the wreck myself won out. I am, after all, a wreck diver at heart.

The next day we left in a speedboat for the fishing boat anchored over the wreck. This time I made sure we had plenty of tanks. This was going to be a working dive, so air usage would be higher than on the survey dives.

We arrived at the fishing boat and observed the fishermen busily splicing the line we would use. They made an eye and used a U-shaped reinforcing piece for the towlines to pull against.

The first dive would involve the four divers wrapping the mooring line around the wreck. We would be tying the line to the sides of the boat through the wash through holes at the base of the gunwales. This, theoretically, would hold the line in place when the surface vessels pulled.

The second dive would have us thread the towline through the eye of the line we had previously placed on the wreck.

When the fishermen had finished their work on the line, we suited up for the dive. Entry into the water went smoothly this time. After my first trip, that was a relief.

The mooring line was much heavier in the water than I had imagined. It was work for the group of us to haul it over to the mooring buoy to descend.

Due to air limits, we needed to descend fairly quickly, which if you remember from the first part of the story, can cause narcosis. We tied off two tanks at approximately 6m down the line. These would serve as safety bottles for the two dives. We also carried an extra tank each, for decompression.

The funny thing about narcosis is that it is increased not only by depth, but also by workload. A diver could be at 60m and feel relatively OK, but if you had the diver swim at top speed for only 10m, at the same depth, instant narcosis. I had seen this a few times setting mooring buoys in deep water. This dive was going to be a working dive at approximately 60m.

During the descent, I started to get an eerie feeling that we were diving on a fresh grave. Now, I've been on plenty of wrecks, many of which had fatalities when they sank. But, this was different in that it had only sunk the week before. As of yet no bodies had been sighted, but they were there, somewhere.

The water was slightly clearer than on the first day. Visibility was around 15m. Light penetrated much deeper than in areas where I had previously been wreck diving.

I looked at my depth gauge, 30m, 40m, 50m... I was checking myself for signs of narcosis as we went below 40m. So far so good.

We were just past 40m when I saw the outline of the wreck clearly. A spine tingling feeling made me shiver in the warm water. Past 50m the wreck became clear. At about 60m we were on the bottom.

The wreck was sitting upright, leaning just slightly to one side. It looked identical to the boat on the surface. You would almost expect to see the fishermen walking its decks. The silt that covered it, here and there, gave it a ghostly appearance. I was amazed that it hadn't sunk further into the silt. We didn't have time for a tour, so we got right to work.

The first thing we did was to make sure everyone was OK. I was concerned with the Thai diver, but he seemed OK. I think he was seeing piles of Baht, instead of a wreck. With that done we paired off in our buddy teams and spaced ourselves about 5m from the other team along the mooring line.

Our first task was to haul the line completely around the boat. That completed and a quick check for narcosis, it was time to secure the line to the wreck. One buddy would hold the line, while the other buddy would use the smaller rope to tie it off.

My buddy and I were alternating tasks, so as to make sure we split the effort of swimming the tie off line. After we had tied 4 or 5 lines it was my turn again to hold the mooring line in place.

I bent to lift the line off the bottom, and noticed a shape halfway under the hull. For the second time that day a shiver went up my spine. The shape was unmistakable. I tapped my buddy on the leg and he turned to see what I was pointing to. His eyes went wide as he looked at a pair of legs covered with a fine dusting of silt, sticking out from under the wreck.

I have no idea what went through his mind at that moment, and we didn?t have time to sit and contemplate the sailor?s fate. We just continued on to the next place, occasionally looking back to the legs.

We finished our task and met at the mooring that went from the wreck to the surface. An air check was done and the only person on their reserve tank was the Thai.

We started our ascent being extremely cautious not to exceed our decompression ceiling. A dive that had lasted not more than 20 minutes, was costing us about 90 minutes of deco time. I longed for nitrox or O2 to speed up the decompression.

We surfaced and hauled our gear back aboard the fishing boat. The Thai shop owner immediately went to report our success to the captain and the owner of the wreck.

Now it was time for lunch and a good long surface interval before the next dive. My buddy and I slipped away to discuss what we had seen under the wreck.

Next....Chumpon Salvage III - The recovery

[ June 08, 2001: Message edited by: Brink15 ]

[ June 08, 2001: Message edited by: Brink15 ]

[ June 08, 2001: Message edited by: Brink15 ]

[racha]

Brink,

Are you going to keep us waiting again for chapter III,I knew i should have sent my credit card number to you.

Check out my private post to you also.

[Guest]

goddam this is a facinating story. i look forward to the next installation.

-soi dog

oh, why was there no nitrox or o2?

[Brink15]

SD,

At the time the only O2 on Koh Tao was continous flow (emergency) bottles stored on the boats.

Nitrox and staging equipment did not even exist.

When I first arrived in Thailand in 1994, I was one of the only nitrox instructors around. It was impossible to convince shop owners there was a market for tech diving in Asia.

Now look at all the adds for rebreather classes, etc..

I'll try to add the next chapter this weekend.

Thanks for the good word on the story.