Movie: Open Water

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mike - 20 Sep 2004 06:59 GMT

Having just seen this film, I'm interested in the so called 'True
Story' it is based on.

Does anybody know the true story it is based on???
Were the divers ever found or was it just surmised that they were
eaten by sharks???
Has anyone on this group ever experienced a dive boat leaving any
divers even for a short while ??

I have never known anything like that although I have experienced
situations where divers have been in the water for a while because
they have come up far from the dive-boat and it has taken the boat a
while (20 minutes) to find them.

Mike

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nobody - 20 Sep 2004 14:41 GMT

> Has anyone on this group ever experienced a dive boat leaving any
> divers even for a short while ??

I was diving with the Dual Porpoise in Key Largo. Nice day. Shallow reef
dive in Pennekamp Marine Park. My daughter was my buddy. We were the
only two on the boat, so there was little chance that we'd be left
behind. We did a straight out and back to the mooring line, and had air
to spare, so after looking up to see our boat hull, we scouted around
the mooring line, within 50 meters, and returned to make a nice, slow
ascent. The mooring line was suspiciously slack and no hull was
visibile. Now, I'm a reasonably competent navigator, but I was figuring
that I must be at the wrong mooring point ... I mean, Hey! The boat was
there ten minutes ago. I motioned for my buddy to wait at our twenty
foot hang and I drifted up to see where we were. A lot of these six
packs look alike and I thought for a moment that ours was at the next
mooring point, about 100 meters away, but I wasn't sure. About that
time, I heard a shout on a bullhorn from behind me, and it was our boat,
coming toward the buouy. I motioned for my daughter to come up, and we
climbed aboard. Total time of Snafu ... two minutes, maybe four.

It turned out that our boat was asked by another boat to assist two of
its divers who were too far away and too tired to swim back to their own
boat. That boat had other divers still diving and didn't want to leave
their mooring line. So in effect, our boat left us to help divers from
another boat, so their boat wouldn't have to leave their other divers. I
have heard various opinions about whether our boat should have left us
and I suppose it is a judgement call on the part of our boat captain;
ie. If the other divers were truly in distress, and our boat was closer
(it was), was our boat obligated to leave us? I sure didn't like the
feeling of surfacing with no boat there, but it wasn't too bad since
there were other boats in the area. Definitely a weird feeling, though!

FWIW,

Bart F.

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mike - 20 Sep 2004 20:59 GMT

I sure didn't like the

> feeling of surfacing with no boat there, but it wasn't too bad since
> there were other boats in the area. Definitely a weird feeling, though!

FWIW,
Bart F.

Funny you should say it was a 'wierd feeling' (presumably not pleasant
wierd!)
The longest surface wait I have had was 40 minutes.
This was off Racha Noi in Thailand. The boat had picked up 2 divers
and when we surfaced about 200 yds away the boat turned and somehow a
rope got tangled around the ladder to the dive platform bending it
badly and tangled around the propellor.
The Thai boat boys worked on it for 40 minutes with the engine off and
the boat drifting further and further from us.

Now it was a wonderfully pleasant day and an exceptionally calm sea.
At first we had some fun chat on the surface enjoying the sun and
jokes. After half an hour the mood really started to change as we were
getting colder in the sea, one fair skinned guy was feeling his head
burning in the sun and as we drifted away from the lea of the island
we were aware that the boat getting further and further away with no
communicatio about how serious the problem was. One other in our group
was feeling sea sick in the swell and started getting very anxious.
Of course we were all OK, infact I remember the funny chat more than
panic but it did make us all think....
If it was not a flat calm, but a tropical storm or rough sea it would
have been horribly unpleasant. Then I think we would all have been
feeling VERY uncomfortable !
Mike

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BenDavison - 20 Sep 2004 20:24 GMT

The true story is on our website at www.undercurrent.org

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H. Huntzinger - 21 Sep 2004 11:01 GMT

On rec.scuba, bendavison@aol.com (BenDavison) posted:

[deleted...a troll for his website where he sells a magazine]

There have been several instances of divers who have been left behind by
diveboat operations.

Three of the better-known ones that immediately come to mind for me were:

- 2/94: a group of 5 japanese divers + 1 guide in Palau whose boat
had an engine failure on a drift dive (some of the bodies
were later found; no survivors). With six in total lost, probably
the worst such accident yet.

http://tinyurl.com/5ljp6

- 2/00: a couple in the Florida Keys was left behind by Kelly's
(self-rescue by climbing onto a buoy; survived overnight and
picked up by a fishing boat)

- 4/04. One diver was left off Newport Beach, Calif. He was
located after about five hours.

- 1/98 Tom and Eileen Longeran off Australia's Great Barrier Reef
(never found the bodies), and for whom the movie's probably
mostly based on.

http://tinyurl.com/3zovw

FWIW, over the years, there have been many other accidents in the dive
industry, such as people being run over and hit by the diveboat props.
There have also been dive boat sinkings, sometimes with fatalities: the
worst of these was probably the Peter Hughes M/V Wave Dancer in 2003,
which rolled over while tied up at a dock to try to ride out Hurricane
Iris in Belize, killing twenty of twenty-eight who were onboard.

-hh

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Dillon Pyron - 21 Sep 2004 16:56 GMT

>On rec.scuba, bendavison@aol.com (BenDavison) posted:
>
>[deleted...a troll for his website where he sells a magazine]

<snip>

>FWIW, over the years, there have been many other accidents in the dive
>industry, such as people being run over and hit by the diveboat props.
>There have also been dive boat sinkings, sometimes with fatalities: the
>worst of these was probably the Peter Hughes M/V Wave Dancer in 2003,

It was 2001.

>which rolled over while tied up at a dock to try to ride out Hurricane
>Iris in Belize, killing twenty of twenty-eight who were onboard.
>
>-hh

Signature

dillon

When I was a kid, I thought the angel's name was Hark
and the horse's name was Bob.

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mike - 22 Sep 2004 23:43 GMT

H.H,
Thanks for the reply. It makes pretty sobering reading! There was also
an incident in the Red Sea a couple of months ago where a group of
divers got lost and moving fast in the current were found (I think) 17
hours later - but no serious problems!
It is a strong reminder how much we are at the mercy of the competance
on the day,of the boat captain and his team.
Regards,
Mike

" H. Huntzinger" ]

> There have been several instances of divers who have been left behind by
> diveboat operations.
[quoted text clipped - 29 lines]
>
> -hh

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Joe - 21 Sep 2004 00:55 GMT

My understanding is that the "real" couple the story was based on was
never found.

>Having just seen this film, I'm interested in the so called 'True
>Story' it is based on.
[quoted text clipped - 11 lines]
>
>Mike

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rebecca wright - 26 Jan 2005 22:42 GMT

Actually, it seems the only fact on which the movie is based is that the couple was left by the boat and died.
I have read some of the articles concerning the case and there is not evidence that they even saw one shark.
The majority of the movie is fiction. The bodies were not recovered and the articles that were found were not damaged except for a wetsuit, possibly Eileen's, which could have been torn by coral.

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