2021 New Years Day

 

If you went looking for the Point Pleasant First Aid Dive Team on New Year’s Day you would have to have gone to Gull Island Park. Because the team was up holding their 24 year old tradition of diving on New Year’s Day

 Since the team was started 24 years ago they have never missed a New Year’s Day. Regardless of the weather or water conditions. The coldest dive was in 2018 with an air temperature of 08 degrees and a   wind chill of -4 degrees

  Since the team is on call 24/7/365 they have to be ready to go in the water in all kinds of conditions. In New Year’s Day past they have had air temperatures in the 50’s, 40’s 30’s and water temperatures of always around high 30’s to low 40’s. Visibility has been anywhere from 0-30 feet, this year was pretty good with visibility between 10-15+ feet.

  It’s not always Gull Island. In 2020 it was at the foot of Bay Ave at the boat ramp

In 2019 it was at Manasquan Inlet

2016 it was Shark River inlet

   Some years when the ocean is flat the team will dive off the beach. Sometimes a beach wreck or off the beach and into the let like in 2015 where the team dove off the 
beach and let the tide bring them down the Manasquan Inlet getting out by the parking lot

   After the dives it was always back to the building to clean up and have a lunch of soup and sandwiches, but not this year! This year the team had a feast, thanks to Chris and his wife, Jim Sr & Jr, Sue L, Julia and Flo the team had two kinds of soups, chili, sausage and peppers and Corn bread, ziti and a nice salad. There was something for everybody

So if you're a diver looking to dive or someone who wants to watch and be part of the first dive, mark it in your date book for next New Year's Day. Come see what we do both the first aid and the dive team. You never know you might want to join!

State police offshore jet-ski recovery

A few weeks back the team was having their October meeting and got a call from the police telling us to stand by for a request from the New Jersey State police. A jet ski has over turned in the inlet and with a missing person.

    Since it was a meeting we had the whole team and was able to put two crew together, one for the search at the inlet and another crew for Rescue 34 (our 19 foot Rib, rescue boat boat). The crew for the boat would launch the boat and head for the inlet and the other crew would gear up for the inlet search.

    With a strong outgoing tide the jet-ski was pulled far off shore. The crew at the inlet waited to see if a in water search was needed. While the boat crew headed off shore. As the boat cleared the inlet we could see a boat about a mile offshore and headed towards it.

 We didn’t see the coast guard, so we kept heading to the boat we could see. It turned out to be a state police boat and as we got closer we could see the upside down jet-ski behind the boat. They were trying to turn it right side up but with the 4-6 swells were having a hard time.

   I told them we had divers on the boat and we could check to see if anyone was trapped under it and they asked if we could get the numbers off it. Diver Rich Gurry rolled off the boat and checked the jet-ski and got the numbers off it.

    Then the State police said they were going to try to tow it back in and with it upside down and that was going to be very hard. So we put Rich and new member Julia Brand in the water to turn it back up right. Once up right they got a tow line on the jet-ski and started for the inlet, which by now was a mile and a half away.

     With the ocean as rough as it was we told the state police we would stay with them in case anything happened (IE flip over, tow line break) By the time we got back to the inlet they knew the driver was safe and no one was in the water and the owner would meet them at the boat ramp at the foot of Bay ave.

   We follow behind them the whole way in and stayed with them until the jet-ski was on the trailer and out of the water. The state police did a get job getting the jet-ski and getting it back to the owner and they thanked us for our help.

    The owner told us the whole story about how it happened, he was going out the inlet and saw how rough the ocean was and tried to turn around and a wave hit him and rolled the jet-ski. With the out- going tide and the rough water at the end of the inlet they tried a few times to roll it back but couldn’t, so he jumped on his friends jet-ski and came back in.

    We didn’t get any pictures offshore because someone forgot the camera (ME). With as rough as it was we were kind of busy doing our jobs, me driving the boat and Sue Lewicki as safety diver and Rich and Julia in the water, we did get a few as we came in the inlet. The state police said they got a few with us in the water, so if we ever get them I’ll add them to this post

Driving on the beach

 

Being a first aid squad and dive team who’s coverage area covers three towns and many miles of ocean coast line it is important that we have vehicles can go on the beach. To haul equipment and people and to remove patients from the beach or jetty.

    Driving on the beach is not like driving on the road. There is things you need to do and not do. That’s what two week end drills was about. The first was driving the squad’s 5 ton military truck (34 AT) and using the air systems that is on it. We also have a4x4 ambulance and two ford SUV’s

    The second drill was getting the trucks on the beach and how to drive them without getting stuck. First we have to open the locked gates, but all the beach trucks have a key to open them. Once open and then how to remove the post that’s in the middle of the ramp so the trucks get by.

Once on the beach 342 (the beach ambulance) got stuck with in a hundred feet. Lesson number 1, how to free the truck. We have valves on 346, 349 and 342 that you put on the tires that bleed air out of the tires to a preset pressure that helps the truck drive in the soft sand. Most times only 342 need these. 349 and 346 being smaller SUV’s can get away not having to use them.

    The 5 ton truck (34 AT) can come right down the ramp and on the sand without doing anything. Most times you don’t even need to put it in all wheel drive.

   After driving up and down the beach, making turns and even backing up it was time finish the drill. One last lesson happened on the street and that was how to fill tires using the on board compressor on 34 AT. Then it was back to the building to clean all the sand out of and underneath all the trucks

     Thanks to Ali, Julia, Maya, Tony, Dennis, Chris, Big Joe, Evan for coming out and Sabrina and Chet for setting this drill up.

  

Joint Fire Company and First Aid drill 2020

 

On a Wednesday night in August the Point Pleasant First Aid Dive Team ran a joint drill for the Point Pleasant fire Department and first Aid squad on the south jetty of Manasquan Inlet.

   Since the fire department maybe called to assist the dive team and the first aid in searching for and removing injured people from the jetty it is important that every one learns to work together as a team and then gets to see how we work getting to the injured and then removing them from the jetty. With the many holes and gaps in the rocks and the jacks if someone falls in they can go down pretty far and be out of sight from someone on top of the jetty.

   

   

   So learning to work down in the jetty in a confined space is a skill that must be mastered. At times finding them is the easy part, getting them out is another story. Working in the small space and getting them on a back board and strapped down and then getting them out is the hard part.   

    The scenarios that we used in the drill are based on past events that have happened on the jetty. So searching and working in small places and lifting and moving are very important.

  Thank you to the fire department, first aid and the dive team for coming out and training so hard so we'll be ready for when the call coming in.

Recovery dive

At times the dive team gets called by people looking for help after they dropped something off their boat or dock and don't know who to call for help.


 In the past the team has recovered wedding rings, fishing poles, cameras, cell phones eye glasses and sun glasses. If we have divers available at the time we always try to help.

  This time it was a boat captain who dropped his very expensive prescription glasses while getting off his boat at the dock.
   A call was made to Asst. Chief Diver Joe Southard who called to see if any one was available to dive. Chief Diver Chet was available and geared up and headed over to the boat slip to talk to the captain and find out all the information he could.
   After finding out where the glasses were dropped overboard, he planned a search pattern to use that would work in the boat slip and under the boat.

   Since it was so late in the day this was going to be a night dive. Chet dropped into the water and went right to work searching the boat slip. With the good visibility and his dive light he covered the slip in minutes. Finding no glasses he searched the slip again going slower and checking every hole and folds on the bottom. After the second search with no glasses found he moved the search area into the slip.

    Moving towards the back of the boat in the next slip Chet dropped down to the bottom and started his search moving slowly forward searching from side to side and slowly working his way towards shore. Moving no more then ten feet there sat the glasses

  Surfacing with the glasses in hand the captain couldn't believe his eyes. Not only did he get his glasses back, but that they were recovered in only ten minutes.

 

You can see the whole video of the recovery by going to WWW.youtube.com/watch?v=172omeAMOBk

2019 Team's new recond

2019 Will go down in the dive team’s history. In this one year the team has recovered 6542 pounds of lead sinkers.

    The team recovers these in the course of our training dives. As the members learn about search patterns and the power of observation we recover the sinkers we see, sometimes they are just sitting on the bottom and are easy just to pick up and other times they are in large balls of fishing line and have to be cut free. 

  So now the divers have to work to cut them free, using a dive knife or dive/EMT scissors. Learning to work underwater is a must because we never know what we may be asked to do (IE evidence dive, body recovery, car or truck recovery) we want to be ready for anything.

    During these dives the divers now have to do some problem solving, we have found sinkers now we have to cut them free and now we have to get them back to an exit point or up to a boat. We use a capped PVC pipe as a sinker tube to carry the sinkers in, only the more you find the more you have to carry and the bigger the tube the heavier it is. Some of the tubes we use can carry up to 60 pounds.

    Swimming 60 pounds of sinkers is no fun, now the divers get to use another tool that they need to be able to use and that is a lift bag. A lift bag is a water proof bag that the diver fills with air and it gives the sinker tube buoyancy and with the right size lift bag and enough air the sinker tube can become weight less, making it much easier to swim with.

    Since the dive team is part of the first aid squad the team doesn’t get a whole lot of funding. But by recovering sinker and selling back to the fishermen at the annual fishing flea market the team is able help support itself.

    In the course of these dives the divers remove large amounts of fishing line and other debris that litter the bottom. These large mounts of fishing line can trap fish and crabs and this turns into a death sentence.

   So by the team’s training dives we are mastering our skills, cleaning the environment, raising funds for the team and making it a little safer for the marine life.