Supervisor in Houma told me to ignore the current, still thinking about that call

A dive sup with 30 years in the Gulf told me to plan around the tide tables instead of trusting the surface feel, and two days later a 4-knot set pinned me against a piling off a platform near Port Fourchon, so which do you trust when the computer and the old hands disagree?

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1 Comment

white.keith6d ago

Maybe it's just me but that whole tide table thing reminds me of a guy I knew who swore by the moon phases for when to pull crab pots. He'd ignore the wind and the swell readings off the buoy and just go by what the calendar said. One night he got his lines tangled in a shrimp boat's rigging because the current was doing something the moon never predicted. Old timers have their reasons, but the water doesn't read the same books they do. If the computer says one thing and your gut says another, I'd trust the thing that's actually touching your gear right then.