Dock-diving...

Suit up! We're going in!

Time for a random tale about one of the numerous little adventures going on around the Vasa Museum every day. This time we head for the putrid little pond infront of the museum for a little dock-diving!


The whole thing started with this little fountain. The Vasa Museum is built over an old graving dock (drydock cut out of the bedrock). The ship and the museum only cover part of it leaving the inland end of the dock an open pit that has been filled with water for nifty little pond. Well, someone got the bright idea to add a fountain made from a Zetterström nozzle...


The Zetterström nozzle shoots water both forward through the tip and backward through those depressions just below the head shown here. This makes it possible to use a high-pressure water hose underwater without getting the Walt Disney effect that sends cartoon characters flailing about on the end of the hose.

The Zetterström nozzle was critical in the Vasa salvage project in the late 1950s being used to blast away mud, silt, and clay as divers essentially drilled a set of tunnels under Vasa for the lifting slings. So the fountain has a special meaning here in front of the Vasa Museum.

Well, the problem was that this great fountain is mounted on a buoy tethered to the bottom of the graving dock by a cable. The cable goes through a pair of blocks (pulleys) and comes up to the surface along the dock wall where it can be managed. The thing was, those little blocks on the bottom of the dock had corroded out and broke. The buoy bobbed up, tipped over halfway, and then began floating about the pond spouting water over the railing etc. Fiddlesticks!



The fountain was quickly shut off and the head scratching over how to fix it began. Draining the dock of several hundred tons of water and to make the repair and then refilling it was out of the question. It appeared that the only way to fix it was to don a mask, tank, and flippers and dive into the dock and mount a new block; something Fred was not looking forward to as a hen mallard had been living in the putrid dock with her clutch of ducklings all spring.

But alas, one must do what needs to be done. So Niklas gathered up all the tools, ropes, a new block, and the fountain buoy (which had been removed) and began reassembling the fountain unit.

After we had hauled the 20ft-long pipe and bouy through the throngs of tourists, it was time to refit the pumping unit.

The design was pretty simple with a submersible electric pump hung from the bottom of the buoy. It would simply draw water directly out of the dock for launch up the pipe and into the air for the viewing pleasure of the visitors and resident ducks.



But simplicity of design rarely means simplicity of assembly...


...and there was a good bit of shoving and grunting trying to get the pump refitted and all its hose-clamps tightened.

Then the dirty work began; Fred wriggled into his full-body drysuit (he would wear nothing less in the 'duck poop pond' regardless of the early summer heat) and prepared to descend into the disgustingly murkey depths.

First came the suit, then the requisite struggle with the tank, valves, lead weight belt, and for good measure, some prolonged wrestling with the adjustment straps on the full-coverage face-mask.


Of course all this activity began to draw a crowd. First it was museum staff on their coffee break who had heard something about Fred diving in the duck pond; that was just somethign that had to be seen. Here Ronny and Mikke hover about for a look. As Fred suited up and began to look more and more like a space alien with huge yellow feet, a cylindrical humpback, and a glass face, tourists started to gather around the area to watch.

Down below on a wobbly steel grating, Fred got his flippers on, buckled up his BCD, fitted his mask...

...and made sure I knew all the pull-signals as I was to be his dive-tender on the emergency tether. One, give me more line; Two, take up the slack; Three, get me out of here! It wasn't the more complex signals Fred uses on his archological sites, but it was a good, simplified version a beginner dive-tender like me couldn't forget.


Then, with everything set (and every inch of skin covered to evade the duck feces), Fred laboriously heaved himself and all his tanks and weights forward and plundged into the hideous brown water.


Then the work began and Fred swam along the wall (with me following on the tether like a puppy) toward the reconstructed fountain buoy which Niklas , Ronny, and I had just put back in the water.


Then this white bucket was lowered down to Fred with the new block and an assortment of tools he might need while on the bottom of the dock, some 5 meters below the surface.


With a parting gurgle and an 'A-okay' hand signal, Fred disappeared into the murk.


His 'Dive Support Team' followed along with the various bits of equipment (from left to right, Eddie with the tool bucket, Niklas with the buoy tether, me with Fred's emergency tether, and Ronny with the fountain buoy).


After fixing the first broken block on the bottom, the cloud of bubbles that marked Fred's location began to move out toward the middle of the graving dock.


The tool bucket and the fountain then scooted off after him, being towed from below.



A few minutes later the fountain was bobbing in the middle of the dock, right in place, and Niklas could start taughtening the cable and securing the buoy fountain in place.


Fred, delighted that the repair had gone well (and even more delighted to be out of the foul-tasting water) surfaced and began passing me his gear and then hauled out; a job well done.

The pump unit was plugged in and, in seconds, the Zetterström fountain spouted back to life in the Vasa Museum dock.

What a sight!

It was so scenic a few of the staff just had to go for a short row around the fountain...to pick up pop bottles thrown into the pond by tourists.

So there you have it, another dull, hum-drum day at the Vasa Museum doing routine maintenance. I may never leave...

Special thanks to Arvid Engström for use of some of his photos.