Over at Hog on Ice, Steve had a post a couple of days ago on the subject listed above, in particular how getting in trouble in the water can mean things going way south waaaay fast. I can't speak of the ocean, never been out on it. I have been on some fairly big lakes when a strong wind came up or a storm was moving in. A half-mile from shore looks like a damn long way at times like that, and the first time made a serious impression on me. As in looking for life jackets, and wondering if I could bring along a face mask and snorkel in the future. I can swim, but did I mention that it looked like a damn long way to shore? Even longer with the waves getting bigger?
I can't imagine the feeling of being miles from the nearest land and having your boat start to play 'elevator stuck on down', and I really don't want to. If in the future I do get the chance to go fishing way out there, I plan on asking questions about emergency gear. That was reinforced during a dive years ago. A friend and I had rented some equipment, in my case including a buoyancy compensator; basically an inflatable vest you add or dump air from so you don't sink or rise from your desired depth. Near the end I happened to twist sideways while changing direction and the BC dumped most of the air in it. Scared hell out of me, because a BC is also your life vest if something happens and you need floatation help. It turned out the pressure relief valve, there to keep the vest from popping from overinflation, was defective; if you were swimming along normally it held air in the top above the valve, but if you turned so that the valve was above that area- like if you were on the surface counting on it to keep you up- it would vent. The guy at the shop wasn't too concerned when we told him(after all, we made it back didn't we?), which caused us to never rent anything from that place again. Our diving instructor had been very specific about checking your equipment, and we did, but just blowing some air into the BC didn't reveal the problem unless you fully inflated it. Which I always did after that.
Years later I knew some people on the state Lake Patrol, and listening to them was flat amazing. Some of the people out on the water were on a level to make Sean Penn look like Popeye. Well, maybe his apprentice seaman. Like the guy in the middle of one of the biggest lakes in the state on a $5 air mattress, who didn't see a problem. Or the drunks told to get off the water who actually did offer him a beer. And so forth.
I long ago decided that it wasn't surprising when some of these people drown and make it into the news; what's amazing is how many of these idiots don't drown and show up in the news.
There's a guy named Humberto Fontova down in LA who's written a bunch of articles and several books, one of them 'The Helldivers Rodeo' about spearfishing in the Gulf. In some way's I'd love to go along, but some of the descriptions of 'how we did it this time' flat scares hell out of me for precisely the reason Steve mentioned about boats: when something goes wrong it often cascades into further problems that get worse at each step. And 40 or 50 or more feet down it doesn't take much of a mistake to convert you to fish food. I love his writings, and I'd love to go out with him, but damn!
Steve, if I ever get to Florida to fish I think I'll try to talk my way into going with you. At least I'll know the emergency gear works.
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