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08/14/2026 to 08/16/2026
Light Salvage & Recovery Class 🤿🔧 , Dive Team Training, Knots 🪢

Light Salvage & Recovery Class August 14th,15th, & 16th.

Day 0

Classroom review of basics/technical specs of lift bags, types of salvage operations i.e., stage lift vs. a direct lift, math formulas related to water displacement, weight of various materials in water, air requirements, etc. Second half of day was spent conducting pool exercises, full face mask exchange, BCD removal/redonning, emergency accent, and out-of-air accent/weight ditch. Entire team did really well with following the instructors change of plans.

Day 1

Rich and I teamed up and dry rigged a Tahoe in the barn with blackout masks on, verbal communication is the key. learned how to put a Butterfly in the blight. SAR deposited a second vehicle into Tioga, the first vehicle went over the edge and is currently at 150’… The team rigged, and Nathan and I brought two air hoses to the vehicle. I then connected one air hose to a rear lift bag after an air purge. It was a long day.

Day 2

We managed to leave the barn at 8am for our final day of class. For my afternoon training dive, Rich and I brought two 2000 lbs. lift bags to our salvage site, our vehicle had already been rigged by previous divers. We had to spend some time getting the last bits of air out of the bags before descending. I attached one lift bag to the driver’s side of our vehicle and Rich attached one to the passenger side, we purged our air lines, and we then attached air lines to our lift bags. We then surfaced and cleared.

Ground support then filled the air bags and we had a successful lift. We then open the ball valves on the lift bags and dropped the vehicle back down. And finally, we de-rigged the vehicle for the next divers and conducted some recon for attachment points around the B seat posts for internal rigging/lift bag deployment. The team successfully floated the vehicle to the boat landing and the vehicle was picked up by a tow truck at the conclusion of class. Back at the barn, Tom Champagne taught Nathan and I how to wrap up an airline using an alternate-direction/reverse coiling method.

🔗 Links

How to tie into a climbing harness using a figure eight knot.

EOR - Thank you for reading!

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© 2026. This work by Isaiah Keating is openly licensed via CC BY-SA 4.0
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