Finally found it!

[Jon]

We got called out a few weeks ago to raise a sunken waterski boat. It was goingto be an seasy job- just drop down in an inland lake and bring it back up.

Of course, nothing ever goes quite as planned and the first issue happened to be just where it sunk- no one had accurate enough numbers and they were all so freaked when it happened that they couldn't get us close.:head

So, we came back with the side scan sonar and started searching the bottom. Lots of patterns, and a couple of dives doing line sweeps on the bottom, turned up nothing. It did let us know what we had in store for us- no vis and stinking water that left all of our gear smelling like rotten eggs.

Well, today we finally found the thing- standing straight up in the air giving us as little target to aim for as possible!:blackeye

Once we found it, we had it up and loaded back on its trailer in less than an hour. :friday What normally is the easy part, locating it, turned out to be the hard part and the part we were worried about, rigging a boat in zero vis, was a snap. It helps when you have a crew that's used to working together to make things run smoothly. After so many years of working together my father-in-law and I just seem to know what the other one is thinking down there so the work goes by fast.

Here's some pics from today;

Jon

 

[Jon]

The lake itself wasn't that deep, only 45', but the vis was zero at the bottom. The top of the boat was sitting right at 20' and we enjoyed about 5' of vis there- which made for a good spot to stage all of our bags.

Here's a few more once we had it on the surface.

Jon

 

[Whopperhead]

WOW! GOOD JOB! That looks like a fast boat.

 

[Pastor]

WOW! GOOD JOB! That looks like a fast boat.

From the surface to 20` in 20 seconds? rofl It's got to float to be fast

 

[Jon]

They said that the boat could do 90mph.

Of course, it had no freeboard so any little wave will swamp it and send it to the bottom in a hurry. If you saw how small this lake was it would make you wonder how you could ever get it to 90 mph?:head I think the idea was to have a fast boat that could tow a couple of waterskiers behind it at 45mph.

Another local mentioned that the cottages around the lake dumped their sewage into it for years- and that could explain the smell!:rcard There also zebra mussles in the lake so I'm sure the fish will die off in a few years as it clears up.

It has some decent sized carp, and Ted and I speard there a couple of years ago. I think that if you hit it in the spring and stayed shallow, were the weeds are, it might have some potential. After the last few (scuba) dives I've done there I think I've seen more than enough of this place for a long time to come.rofl

Jon

 

[ILDiver]

Nice job Jon. Like I told you at the cookout, better than my trip out to find a boat in the IL river. But we don't have the good equipment to locate either. I'm not sure if those guys ever went back out to look again. The owner of the boat is moving to TX, so there is a free 200 or 250 Merc outboard in the river