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Pro tip: spend the 20 minutes checking your umbilical before the dive, not 3 hours untangling it after
Last Tuesday I was on a small job in the Gulf doing a routine inspection on a dock piling, nothing deep, maybe 15 feet of water. I rushed the pre-dive setup because the boat was already late getting us out there and I just wanted to get wet. Dropped in, did the inspection fine, then went to come up and my umbilical was snagged on something I couldn't see. Spent 40 minutes down there feeling around in zero vis trying to figure out if it was a crab trap, rebar, or just a knot in my own line. Turned out I had a loop that caught on an old piece of cable tied to the piling, and getting it free meant calling the tender to slack line while I backed out slow. Whole thing added almost 3 hours to the day between the untangle, the extra checks, and redoing my gear log. What made it worse was the whole mess would've taken 20 seconds to spot if I'd just laid the umbilical out straight instead of coiling it loose like an idiot. Now I want to know, do you guys have a set pre-dive check you never skip no matter how rushed the boat is, or do you eyeball it like I did?
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