Commercial Diving with Rick Simon

After a storm swept through New England, I got invited to join Rick Simon again to help salvage a mast that had broken off a sailboat in the storm. He and Shoreline Diving had been contracted to recover the mast and bring it in for parts.

The harbor where the mast had broken off was about a four hour boat ride away from the dock in Noank, so by the time me, Rick, and Rick’s longtime friend and colleague Bobby got there it was late morning. We found the boat in question and met up with Rick’s colleagues Mike and Austin, who joined us before Austin dove down to try and locate the mast itself. Once he found it, we handed down some lines to him which he tied to different sections of the mast. I was geared up at that point, so I hopped in the water with him and we both descended with the lift bags. Visibility was only one or two feet, so we had to descend right on the line and then feel our way along the mast until we got to the section we were going to secure the first lift bag to. We tied them both off, one on either end of the mast, and then filled them one at a time with the inflator hose I had brought down from the boat. Back at the surface, we hooked the lines up to the Integrity’s pulley arms and hauled the mast up. It had been hard to tell how long it was when we were underwater, so I was surprised to see it extended probably ten feet past the stern of the boat!

We pulled it up in sections, first the (mostly) furled sail, then the mast itself. The sail was a lot heavier than I expected, since it was completely waterlogged, but once we drained the water out it wasn’t too hard to haul onto the side of the Integrity. The mast was a lot heavier and less bendy, so in order to get it onto the boat Rick had to bust out the metal grinder and cut it into three sections. One by one, we hauled them onto the boat. There were tons of ropes attached to the mast too, and I rescued a tangled crab as Rick and Bobby set aside as many of the ropes as they could.

With that, we headed to a nearby harbor to drop off the salvaged mast. On the way, we had a balloon-stabbing sidequest: a ton of shiny balloons were floating out in the ocean on our path, so we tried to fish out as many as we could on our way to the harbor. Bobby was grabbing them with the boat hook, and I would stab and deflate them to shove them in the trash can. I counted fifteen balloons by the time we decided to move forward and get to the harbor. Austin and Mike’s boat also picked up about fifteen balloons too. Moral of the story: be aware of how much litter you’re leaving, and especially don’t use the shiny helium balloons from party stores, and especially especially don’t release helium balloons to the whims of the wind for them to get swept away to the ocean!

Once we got to the harbor, Rick expertly (truly, it was really impressive) backed into the berth where the harbor crew helped us lift the sail and mast pieces out of the boat and onto the dock. Once the mast was loaded off, it was back to Noank! It had been really hot close to the shore, but further out there was a really lovely breeze so I spent a good chunk of the ride on the back of the boat, watching the calm water and keeping an eye on the raincloud following us to Noank. Luckily we did, and when we finished up refueling the boat, it only just started to sprinkle.

I’m really glad I got to join Rick for a job like this, it was really cool to see the process and to meet some of his colleagues! And, of course, it’s always lovely to be on a boat on a beautiful day.

– Sofia