BSO Activities
Yuma Dive Team Exercise
On Saturday July 26, Mohave County Sheriff Department Hosted (Agency Assist) the Yuma Police Dept. Dive Team Exercise. This would be an all day 0800 - 1600 hr event. The Yuma Dive Team wanted to go to an area where there was a diverse terrain as well as some deep water for their planned exercise allowing a variety of conditions. The areas selected were Skiers Cove # 2 and a Cove adjacent to the Black Meadow Landing Marina. The Team consisted of 7 members and the exercise was to allow the Team to practice working together and doing hands on using all of their equipment. They had an underwater intercom system that really worked well and an underwater camera that allowed them to record anything of interest. All of the underwater photos here are from that camera.
The Exercise was set up in two parts, one for water in the 20 - 30 ' water depth and another in the 40 - 60 ' range. For the morning, part 1 of the exercise we went to Skiers Cove #2 just South of Site 6 where the historic "Millers Folly" Paddle Wheel boat was sunk by the locals way back when the City of Lake Havasu was just in it's puberty stage. This provided a good subject for them to examine as well as allow them to work around any unknown hazards.
The plan was to use just the Pontoon Dive Boat for the exercise, but it was a little windy and we had too many recreational boats creating hazardous traffic, So we brought in a Patrol Boat to secure the area and that worked out just fine. One BSO was knowledgeable of the exact location of Millers Folly, so once the location was identified we anchored the Dive Boat right on top of it. This kept our divers close at hand and allowed them to do a thorough inspection of "Millers Folly".
A lot of debris and fish habitat had accumulated around the boat as well as a "Big" large mouth bass to keep them company.
Part 2 of the exercise took us to a cove next to Black Meadow Landing where the Dive Team could practice deep dives taking them into the second atmosphere of depth. Practicing the proper ascent modes is a very important part of scuba diving.
We completed our activity and was back at Contact Point @ 1550 hrs. Took the Team to the LH Marina (Scenic Route) while we refueled the Dive Boat for standby operations.
The Yuma Team spent the next day at Body Beach, where they practiced some underwater entanglement drills, (facilitated by the heavy underwater vegetation), tired diver tows, a compass course and some search patterns.
For Photo's check next page