This week on the SHIPSHAPE.PRO podcast we interview Brian LeBlanc. Brian is the Co-Owner of J&B Underwater Services and the Boston Scuba Academy. Brian has built up a massive following for his company that handles underwater hull cleaning, maintenance, and diving instruction. What began as a passion for Scuba diving transformed into a thriving business for underwater marine service. Over the several decades of experience as a Diver Master, Brian gives us the tips and tricks of the trade.
Transcript——
Talha [00:00:00] You listening to the Shipshape podcast? Hi everybody. Welcome to the Shipshape podcast. This is the Talha, and with me is Merrill Charette and a very special guest today. My name is Brian LeBlanc and he is going to be telling us about his underwater experiences in the marine world because he’s been diving for a long time. So we’re going to get to talk with him. And so let’s jump in with our guest start tonight. And his name is Brian LeBlanc. As you mentioned, he’s been very deeply involved with the Marine trades and specifically underwater diving for a long while. So maybe let’s start there. Brian, Welcome to the podcast. Thank you for joining us.
Brian [00:00:50] Well, thank you guys for having us.
Talha [00:00:52] So, Brian, let’s start by you telling us a little bit about yourself and how long you’ve been involved with boats and with diving. And let’s let’s hear it from you.
Brian [00:01:05] Sure. Well, I’ve been a certified diver for over 21 years now. I am a licensed open water scuba instructor. I’ve been anywhere from an advanced diver to a rescue diver to a dive master. And I took it to the next level into the marine industry approximately nine and a half years ago with my business partner, where we started. Jim B Underwater services. In that nine and a half years, we’ve recorded in the area of about 3 to 4000 dives. Everywhere from, I’d say Gloucester, Massachusetts, KPN, all the way down to southern Rhode Island. And inside of that area, we’ve done everything from cleaning boats to mooring work to propeller changes, to cleaning pilings and to searching for toys underwater that kids have lost pretty much anything under one on eight below the waterline, we take, you know.
Talha [00:02:01] Wow, that sounds like quite a lot of experience. I’m really tempted to ask you, in all of these years of experience, do you have like one dive or two dives that really sort of like you still remember after all these times, maybe because they were so good or so bad?
Brian [00:02:18] Oh, of course. I’d say my best recreational dive was, I believe, off of a boat off of Monomoy Island down in the Cape Cod. And we do a set of barges that was actually shot down and sunk by a German U-boat, and I was able to pull off one of the cobblestones from those barges. I think that was my most memorable recreational dive because I able to grab a piece of history and I have it at my house. Business wise. I’d say my most memorable dive was about seven years ago. I had a gentleman, an older gentleman asked me to do a search and recovery dive to find a set of keys. And so I did. I went down to the Keys right about 50 feet. I brought up the key and when I looked at the keys, it was a key chain and an electric key. And I said to the gentleman, I said, I don’t know why he called me because this electric key is fried. And he said, I could care less about the key itself. He wanted the key, Jim. I looked closely. The key chain. It was his one of his service medals from his time in the Army. So I was like, this is really cool. So nonetheless, I did that die for nothing because he was one of our heroes.
Merrill [00:03:30] So, Brian, how exactly did you get into this? How did you get into diving? How’d you get into the Marine trades?
Brian [00:03:37] I have actually had a lifelong love for the water so much to the point where my mother would bring me to a pool when I was like three or four years old. And she would. And I would just jump into the water without any fear of the water. And she said to my dad, We have to get this kid some swimming lessons from there on. And it was just a no brainer. Every time I saw the water I was in the water, I would pretend to scuba dive in my bathtub or in anybody’s pool. And I for the longest time I snorkels, I swam. And then finally, when I was about 23 years old, a friend of mine for Christmas one year, she got me scuba lessons. And from that scuba lessons is where I took off and took over from snorkeling and swimming and actually going underwater and swimming with the fishes as opposed to looking down on the fishes. And since then, actually, and since before then, I have been infatuated with underwater life. Like I thought it was really, really cool how things could grow without sunlight way down deep. And since the earth is 70% water, there’s a lot more to explore than there is on land. That’s that’s pretty much my love of the water has been an ongoing thing for like 43 years now. So you can pretty.
Merrill [00:04:53] Much thank your friend for kind of introducing you into scuba diving.
Brian [00:04:57] I haven’t talked to her in about 20 years, but yes. I thank her every day.
Merrill [00:05:01] I get that you’ve been in the marine industry for quite some time doing diving. But I mean, how did you exactly start in this industry? Like where did you begin?
Brian [00:05:12] That’s a great question. So my business partner, John, he used to teach sailing over at Courageous Sailing in Charlestown. He was there probably about 11 years ago, helping out. And I believe, if memory serves me right, one of the students at the keel on some bottom someplace at one of the islands and one of the people that works over Courageous said, John, you’re a scuba diver. Do me a favor. When you get I’m going to jump under there, have a look at that keel and tell me how bad the damage is. Like, do I have to haul it today? What am I looking? Because I actually was one of the ones that taught my partner how to dive. And I worked with him at the aquarium. And I said to him, I said, when he told me what he was doing, I was like, There might be a market for this. Why else would they ask him instead of people hauling their boats, Let us do the work underwater. And that’s how Gibby and the water services started.
Merrill [00:06:02] What do you enjoy about being a diver? You know, besides, you know, the obvious. Going underwater and seeing, like, the sea life and what what have you. I mean, what keeps you continuing to dive at the present?
Brian [00:06:16] There’s many aspects of diving that I stay with, and a lot of divers know that. Number one, it’s really quiet under there. No horns, no sirens, no people complaining, no people chattering. The only thing you hear is the sound of the bubbles coming out of your regulator. And it’s just a moment of Zen under there. So it’s a good therapy, in my opinion. And also to the pressure of the water all around you is like a nice hydrotherapy. And then you’re also breathing. You’re not breathing oxygen. Well, you can breathe oxygen, but you’re not. You’re breathing air. But the air that you’re breathing is very, very filtered air. And me being a huge asthmatic, my lungs love that. The feeling of quietness. So if you have a having a bad day, I jump on the water and go for a dive and all is well. When I come out of the water and thing, all the marine life is an added bonus.
Talha [00:07:14] Describe more of what you see down there.
Brian [00:07:17] Well, what you see down there, it’s pretty cool. Obviously. You see the cool fish and the cool corals and stuff like that. But when you go under there, it’s a whole different planet, just like the surface of the moon. In fact, we know more about the surface of the moon than we do at the deep stretches of the ocean. There’s nothing that you’ve ever seen because there’s no street signs, there’s no sidewalks, there’s no jeeps, there’s no red, amber and green lights. There’s no little thing telling you one to walk. And when not to walk, it’s just you and the bottom and all of God’s marine life under there that he is blessing me to see.
Merrill [00:07:54] So do you have any phobias about being underwater?
Brian [00:07:58] Any phobias about being underwater? I can’t say that I do have any phobias. No, But you know, what I do have is I have respect for things underwater. I respect the water. It’s just like people will say, Well, aren’t you afraid of sharks? Not afraid of sharks? I just respect sharks. I respect them because I’m going into their habitat. I’m going into where they live. So with any kind of underwater thing, I don’t have a phobia necessarily of anything, but I just have a respect for the whole underwater world.
Merrill [00:08:32] I’ll give you a little story about my experience trying to dive underneath my boat. At one point, I had to clean the boat on the boat. I had to change up some things. And early on I thought I was going to be able to just easily go under the boat and figure all this out. And we’re out in Boston Harbor, right? It’s not like the super clear images that you see on YouTube. I went out and I bought this flashlight and I’m like, okay, I want this underwater flashlight. Well, help me out. And the first time I jumped in, the water had underneath the hole above. And I turned that flashlight on. I mean, Boston Harbor is so murky that the flashlight went in end and the light just stopped and immediately was overwhelmed by this entire situation. I was in no way I could do it. And, you know, I feel like being a diver is one thing, but being a diver and Boston Harbor, that’s a different thing.
Brian [00:09:33] Yeah, I got to agree with you there. And I I’ve heard that story more than once from boat owners. I don’t necessarily have just a regular flashlight, so to speak. We have pretty high lumens flashlights under there. And you know what? That’s why I have a pretty good market up here for doing what I do is because of a couple of aspects. There’s a lot of people that do what I do up here with the marine industry diving. There’s more down south than there is. Up here because down south of a warmer water, clearer water, much easier water to work in because you can see 50, 60 feet. Whereas up here, the water, it’s colder. Always have to wear a wetsuit, always have to wear a hood. And then potentially you have to wear a dry suit. And then there’s some days just like today for me a few hours ago, where my visibility was literally three feet. So I can totally feel where you’re coming from, being a little bit under your boat.
Talha [00:10:26] The brand you mentioned that you’ve been diving across the Northeast and you mentioned some places down south as well. If you had a choice, what are perhaps one of the one or two places that you would really look forward to dive in?
Brian [00:10:39] Well, I’d say two places on my bucket list that I’m looking to dive in or I would like to dive in. One being Hawaii, my girlfriend who was in the Army was stationed there for six years and she said that there’s amazing, amazing out there. Nice. And then the second place that I think I would want to dive is probably Antarctica. I’ve I’ve heard a lot about Antarctica as far as it was clear what the ice diving. Pretty much like Shackleton’s route. I’ve had a couple of friends that have done that and I would like to give those a chance. It’s, you know, it’s not a lot of people’s cup of tea, but I would like to try it someday.
Merrill [00:11:18] Explain what the difference is in your opinion, between like the whole recreational diving scene and the marine industry scene? Oh, there absolutely is.
Brian [00:11:29] In the in the recreational dive, I go out there for pleasure looking for things, seeing things and taking pictures and just going out there with a couple of dive buddies and enjoying the day. On the flip side of it, when I do this for business wise, I’m providing a service to boat owners, marine owners, random people that drop things in the water where it could not be that pretty. There’s things are heavy. We have to wear weight belts underwater. There’s a lot of strain sometimes with certain things just like above water. When people strip a bolt off of a piece of metal, that’s not as hard for them. Because if I strip something under water and I drop it, man, I might have to go down 40, 50 feet to go get it. So you have to be more careful under water as far as cleaning a boat. Sometimes I’ll come up covered in shrimp and propellants and seaweed. For those of you who might not know a capella, it is a skeleton shrimp. And they’re really, really gross. So sometimes I’ll come up, cover with these things in my ears and my mouth everywhere. It’s just plain old gross. That’s another drawback to performing that business underwater. There’s also hazards. When you’re under a boat, you are in an overhead environment. When I’m cleaning docks, I’m under docks. Those that is an overhead environment. When you’re working with multiple propellers or a chain mooring at low tide, where is a lot of slack? Now you’re talking about an entanglement hazard. So if somebody thinks that they can just jump underwater and do this kind of business, I don’t encourage that. I encourage doing it. But going through the proper training first.
Merrill [00:13:14] I’ve heard a lot of stories about people trying to get underneath their boat, thinking that they’re going to change the sinks or like clean the boat and they come up and they just smash their head until the hull, the boat. That is a serious thing that actually happens.
Brian [00:13:29] And not do I get calls about people trying to do something and then I’ll get a call and they’ll say, Can you fix it? And sometimes it might cost them more money than me. Guys, a perfect example of search and recovery. Somebody might drop a set of keys or something overboard and they’ll go down or they’ll drop a big magnet or a grappling hook, and they’re actually doing more harm than good. And it’ll take me longer to find them. If they just left it alone, it would’ve been fine in the first place.
Merrill [00:13:55] Now, something that I’m finding quite interesting is underwater recovery. Boston Harbor, which is in, was one of the dirtiest harbors around. And as of late, I guess they’ve cleaned it up. But when you’ve gone to the bottom of these places trying to do recovery, I mean, what’s some of the weirdest things that you’ve found underneath the water?
Brian [00:14:18] That’s actually a funny question. I found an old brick cell phone that was it probably weighed about £8, brand new. It was one of the old fashioned Nokias. I was actually I was looking for an umbrella at a marina, a big when came by and blew up and blew it and brought up a patio. So I was looking for this umbrella and I came across this Nokia brick phone. That was one of my funny ones with some of the search and recovery is I had a woman asked me once if I could go find her baby stroller that fell off. The first thing I said was it was empty, right? Because we’re calling 911. If it wasn’t, if people would drop anchors, a lot of anchors, but to leave. Also your question about the bottom of the Boston Harbor. I think the Boston Harbor right now is the seventh cleanest harbor in America, if I remember correctly. And the bottom of it, if you were to go down nice and slow and see the bottom of the harbor, it’s just like the surface of the moon. It’s unscathed territory. It’s almost like a beige color. Where the visibility comes into play is it’s a very silty below that. So if you touch the bottom, all that silt comes up and blows up into your face and it makes the visibility horrible. But it’s not, quote unquote, dirty. It’s just very, very turbid, I guess might be the word. How about we hear a little bit about.
Merrill [00:15:43] Your company and what exactly you do and what type of services you provide?
Brian [00:15:48] Sure. So I’d say about 70% of our business is hull cleaning when somebody asks us to clean their boat. That includes everything below the waterline. So if you have a sailboat, it includes your rudder. It include your keel, it includes all your through hulls. It includes all of your running gear. If it’s a powerboat, let’s just say it has two screws on two wheels, two propellers, and it includes everything below it, while on it includes your waterline, those through hulls, those intakes, both sets of running gear and also to we do zinc changes at the time now. When I say the word zinc, that’s just the actually the metal, you’re actually changing the anode and the anode is the sacrificial metal on a boat. So what happens? And there’s three kinds of metals, there’s zinc, magnesium and aluminum using the salt water, magnesium for freshwater and aluminum for brackish water. So taking zinc for an example, you would the salt water wants to give an electron and the zinc wants to take an electron. And that’s where that’s where the bonding happens. And what it does is that prevents the salt water will eat the zinc before it eats the precious metals on people’s boats, for instance, the propellers, the shafts, the rudders, the trim tabs. We change propellers, we do mooring work, changing shackles on more things. Obviously start your recoveries. Like we’ve told about an inspection. Sometimes I’ve had people hit bottom and they’ll have us go under there with a GoPro and inspect the boat. That way they know if they actually have to haul it or know what they’re getting into.
Merrill [00:17:24] How long can a boat stay in the water before you actually need to start thinking about, like hauling it out?
Brian [00:17:32] That’s a pretty broad spectrum. On the boat itself, I would say to start with, does the owner take care of their boat? Do they have a diver come over regularly and check their anodes, check their growth, check their intakes to make sure they’re not sucking anything up and into their strainers, into their baskets? That’s one thing, is if the owner maintains the boat. Second thing is, does the owner use the boat? Even though you can put a blade of paint on a boat, it’s only going to work if you take that boat out and use it. You need to let that paint a blade as the boat’s moving. Another thing. Another thing too, is this year I had a customer who hauled their boat in the fall of 20. I was just under their boat in May of this year and they were they had paint chips already, so they actually got a bad paint job. And that’s a little out of my wheelhouse because I don’t paint boats. But by the look of it is whomever did it did not sand the boat properly and put the input of the paint on properly. So if I didn’t go under that boat, that boat order would have never known that. And what happened was that the boat I took pictures of that gave them pictures to the boat owner and the boat owner went to the person that took care of the paint job and said, Hey, look at this. Thankfully, they hauled the boat, redid the paint job, thanks to a diver doing their job. So how long does I guess that’s a long answer to your question. I’ve had boats that have only been in the water a year and a half that have had to come out. I’ve had boats in the water for five years that haven’t had to go out yet because they maintain their boats.
Talha [00:19:09] Brian, you previously mentioned that people shouldn’t just jump in and start doing this. They need the proper certification and stuff. And what would that be for a budding diver? What is the proper channel?
Brian [00:19:21] Any diver is supposed to have an open water certification. Does that mean that any person can go buy some gear off of eBay and Craigslist and jump on the water and do something? No, I mean, anybody could do that. I mean, that’s like saying that, you know, ironically, you can buy a car in Massachusetts, not even have a driver’s license. Go figure. So that being said, I would suggest before anybody does this, they go get an open water certification at absolute minimum.
Talha [00:19:52] What are some of the other certifications that you and your partner have?
Brian [00:19:56] As far as our diving, I’ve gone on. We up to? Instructor Which was many channels. It’s too many channels to since salads. It goes from open water to advanced Rescue dive master all the way up to open water. My partner is a dive master now, which is like a step below open water instructor, which he’s working off. And him and I, we’re both scientific divers. We were trained as scientific divers as at the New England Aquarium.
Merrill [00:20:24] What exactly is a scientific diver?
Brian [00:20:27] Scientific diver means that you can do research problems underwater and figure them out, so to speak. We were trained as scientific divers to find out about water flow, about salinity in the water, how to judge the oxygen levels in the water. We learned all these when we worked at the New England Aquarium.
Merrill [00:20:49] I know that things have changed over time, like people become very aware of what’s going on in the oceans, what’s going on in their local harbor, and there’s been a huge push in order to try to clean the harbors throughout the coast. How have you seen that change over time?
Brian [00:21:06] It’s changed drastically. Another one of my clients is chairman or one of the founders of Save the Harbor, Save the Bay, and it’s been amazing. And he said most of the most of the the credit is to the Deer Island treatment plant. And a lot of the other credit is just people being conscious of their environment and knowing that it will take care of us if we take care of it. But in 21 years of diving, the visibility and the clarity has just gotten amazing. Before we started GMB Underwater Services, I didn’t do too too much Boston Harbor diving. Since I have been with JMB underwater services, I’ve done obviously I a dive in the harbor about 4 to 500 times a year and the visibility has just gotten absolutely amazing. There would be a time when I first started doing this where I couldn’t see all 15 feet on a 40 foot boat. Just this morning at 4 a.m., I was cleaning a razor with my headlight. I could see the bottom of their keel, which was, I don’t know, ten feet down. It was a big boat and I could see about 20 feet down the boat. So the visibility and the clarity in the water is people are doing their job, which is a good sign for our future generations to come.
Merrill [00:22:20] When it comes to the marine industry, right, Because you’ve been in it such a long time, have there been any changes to the marine industry as a whole? Like what have you noticed throughout the years of being in this industry? Well, I.
Brian [00:22:33] Can only point in for the amount of time that I’ve been doing it, but it seems like more and more people are paying attention to their boats, so to speak. I don’t know if there’s been a lot of people that have been doing this in the harbor. I mean, I know there have been people, but I don’t know if they’re promoting certain things. Like I try to tell people, take care of these things and it’s going to take care of you. It seems a lot more people are doing regular maintenance on their boats, like they’ll just call me in March and say, I want you out here every month. Have a look at the boat to see what it needs and go from there.
Talha [00:23:07] And Brian, how have the trends in marine ownership changed? Are there more boats on the water now? Are there different kinds of boat? How has that side of things changed?
Brian [00:23:17] There is actually I want to say in June, maybe I think it was on the news that this and I think it was through Noah. I don’t remember exactly. 2021 had the highest amount of both the sales in like the last 20 something years. So, yeah, there’s a lot different kinds. And, you know, and with technology today, it’s almost like a moving target. You just can’t hit it. There’s different kinds of boats coming out. No longer is it just a regular shaft and propeller, which they still make those. But now we have different kinds of propulsion systems. We have pod drives, we have sail drives for boats without shaft, we have jet drives, we have empowers. So, yeah, everything is changing and it’s changing really fast. So that was the professional part of diving. The way that is changed with the recreational part of diving the ocean, like I’ve spoke about already, has gotten a lot cleaner and clearer because people are taking care of it. But as far as the equipment goes, what, the recreational diving, it’s becoming a lot easier. Just like importing a lot of the equipment is coming more sophisticated. The gentleman that taught me how to dive 21 years ago is a Vietnam veteran who’s since retired. But he told me when he got certified to learn how to be a diver, it took 80% muscle and 20% brains. And then just talking to him about eight years ago, he goes the way the industry now, it’s now 80% brains and 20% muscle. So that has changed also, too, from a recreational point of view.
Merrill [00:24:51] From your experience, what are the must haves to be a recreational diver and what are the. Must have to be a commercial. You know, you’re. You’re making a living diver.
Brian [00:25:04] The self, a recreational must haves. You absolutely need an open water certification. You have to have taken classes and learn how to use this stuff underwater. This is essentially life support equipment underwater. We’re talking about physiology of the body. We’re talking about gases in your body, gases releasing in your body. So you need you absolutely need training for recreational. I highly, highly encourage that. You get that same training before you take it to a professional point of view, because all of the same laws apply. When I say laws, I don’t mean like police laws. I mean physiology laws of your body. So like Boyle’s Law and Dalton’s law about breathing compressed gases under pressure. So I highly suggest both of those before you even step foot breathing, compressed air underwater. That’s absolutely number one. And then more more than that, to the professional point of view, I would highly suggest working with somebody that’s been doing this for quite a while, because not all boats are the same. Not all paint is the same. Not all anodes are the same. Not all moorings are the same. Not all docks are the same. So I think you need to work with somebody and be in pretty good physical condition because this is a pretty physical job. But I have a quick little quick story about somebody who wanted to try this with me. And I said, absolutely not. This person was on a let’s say, a well-known TV show that happened to be have divers in it. And they happened to come up to this New England area. And they found my number and they said, hey, I’m looking for work, and you give me work. And I said, Yeah, I got to auto work. So he goes, Perfect. So my first question to him was, What kind of certification do you have? What’s your diving certification? He goes, What are you talking about? I go, Well, what sort of are you? You know, what agency? ADI, Maui, SDI, what agency certify you, what your level of certification. And he said to me, he goes, I never took any classes. And I was like, All right, straight one. And I said, Well, my next question was, could you pass a drug test? He goes, Maybe. And I was like, Huh? Strike two. So I said, I don’t think we’re going to work out pretty well, because that’s another thing, too. You cannot work under the influence of anything doing this, because it can it can very much impair your ability to make a decision. You might. Right. Well, save your life.
Talha [00:27:33] And so, Brian, you mentioned and we know this from our marine contracting days, is that a lot of it is sort of word of mouth. Is that still the case? Like how how do you find jobs? How do other divers find jobs? How would somebody entering this field find jobs?
Brian [00:27:50] 80% word of mouth. It’s got to be close to that because first thing we did was pull an insurance binder. That was the very first thing we did. We didn’t have a website. We didn’t have a Facebook page. We have an Instagram page. We had no social media, no website, and we were still getting work. So word of mouth was our biggest, biggest asset. Because if you do an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay, it’s going to go a long way.
Merrill [00:28:14] What was the worst dive you have ever done?
Brian [00:28:19] These there have been so many, but the worst dive I have done professionally was a boat that hadn’t moved in two and a half years with no paint. This boat took me three and a half hours to clean. And it was just it was disgusting between the muscle. It was disgusting in a way. If you don’t know what marine life is, it would be really cool for a marine biologist because the teeming with life on there I was touring kids and mussels and crabs and all kinds of things on there. But this one particular boat that I cleaned, it took me three and a half hours and I came up and I was covered in at least an inch worth of bugs all over my wetsuit.
Merrill [00:28:58] There might change when I just gave you this job that the boat hasn’t been cleaned in five years.
Brian [00:29:03] Yeah, I’m not looking forward to that, but that’s all right. That’s okay. I’ll bring a GoPro for that one, bro.
Talha [00:29:10] Anthony.
Brian [00:29:12] I was thinking about this too. For my worst recreational dive, I would say no, there isn’t one. And there’s a reason for that is because if you’re having a bad day, I don’t suggest going and doing a dive because it’ll impair your decisions or not even having a bad day if you’re not feeling it. Like if something doesn’t feel right, if you have that mojo going on in your brain where just something isn’t really right inside of you, you don’t you don’t dive. And at the same time, if I’m already 5 minutes into a dive and I have some kind of a feeling comes over me like, I don’t know, my regulator is not breathing right or I’m just not feeling it or something just doesn’t seem right. You end the dive, you just tell your dive, buddy, Look, I’m done. Let’s turn around. Welcome. So to have a bad dive, we try to head that off at the pass because the bad dive could turn into a really, really, really bad knife.
Merrill [00:30:08] Have you seen any younger people getting into kind of your profession? You know, has that been the thing?
Brian [00:30:15] Yeah, I’ve actually I’m part of a Facebook group with just how old divers. And I’ve seen a lot of younger men and women getting into it. And I seen one person trying to take off up here up on the north north shore. And I highly say, you know, if they can do it, have that it I mean, there’s work to be done. There is. So, yes, I have seen a couple of younger people doing it.
Merrill [00:30:39] What is your go to your secret sauce? What are some protests?
Brian [00:30:43] Honesty. You got to be honest. This is a very limited field. Like like we just said, not a lot of people are doing this. So there’s a lot of boat owners, marina owners, yacht club memberships that are trusting you to do the work that they’re paying you to do. And you got to be honest about it, because it could potentially come back and hurt you. Like if I go down and I check a mooring and I just tell them, you know, I see the chains. If they’re not in good condition, I’m going to tell them that they’re not in good condition. Honesty will set you free all of the time. Be upfront with people like if I can’t make it to a boat, you know, in an X amount of time, I’m huge on communication. I’m going to communicate to that person. Like my daughter has a doctor’s appointment. I was just under a boat for 4 hours. I’m going to not get to you today because I won’t be able to see. So honesty is a huge thing. And if you can’t do the job, like if it’s above your caliber or you don’t have the tools for it or you don’t have the time for it, don’t do it, don’t go beyond your means because you could potentially get hurt too. Being honest with the clients, being honest with yourself and staying in communication, those are probably the three staples that I and John have lived by for the last nine and a half years, which has made us pretty successful doing this.
Merrill [00:32:04] So not only do you dive with people that own boats, but you dive for marinas, you do industrial contracts, you have a whole range of different services that you actually provide. Now, when you’re working for the marinas, what do you end up doing at those marinas?
Brian [00:32:22] I have one marina that doesn’t have pilings. They have more engines. So in the off season I’ll inspect their chains. I have two marinas now that are looking to hire me or two to find out about cleaning their pilings because I have growth and it’s high growth. It’s mussels and barnacles. They’re having me clean those pilings underwater. Also, they’re having me clean their dock floats because eventually they’re going to grow and grow and grow and just drag and drag and drag on these dock floats. I’ve cleaned electrical cables when you don’t want a lot of weight tugging on them, obviously, for reasons that I have to mention. And then some marinas, I have another two that have asked me to change anodes on their pilings because they’re metal pilings. So those are just a few of things. And I’ve done search recoveries for marinas. I’ve had to go find a dock cart here and there or an umbrella like I mentioned earlier. So those are a few of the things that actual marinas and yacht clubs happen to do.
Merrill [00:33:23] So for mooring balls back then is that it’s a chain going down to an anchor, right? And they are super susceptible to corrosion because they’re under water and they’re in salt environment. What is the whole scene for doing Mooring?
Brian [00:33:41] It depends on the metal that the people use to put their chains on. Like you can get obviously like a horrible galvanized piece of metal and it’s actually two different sizes. Most moorings that I work with, which I like to hold more than like a 50 to 60 foot boat, goes from the ball to a half inch chain to a shackle and then to a five inch chain and then to the mooring connected by another shackle at the bottom. Again, it depends on the metal. If they use a stainless or a really good heavy metal depends on how long they hold it. There’s different answers for different kinds of metal and warnings and what they use for their equipment on how long they will last.
Merrill [00:34:19] So what is the progression of growth in general like is that if the boat’s been sitting there for two weeks, they get this beard going on and then after, you know, three weeks, something starts to grow on the hull. What is the time frame for a lot of this?
Brian [00:34:36] The beard, which some people might not know, is that on the water line? So where obviously the water and the air meet on the side of a boat, that’s always the first place to grow because it’s it’s where the water is the warmest and it’s where the sun can just beat down. And it’s just a recipe for growth. The farther down you go on the bottom of the boat, the less it grows because it gets cold out. And the sun doesn’t reach that far down. A good example is the boat that I cleaned today. I cleaned it six weeks ago and it had a heavy, heavy film on it, but it had no barnacles or heavy growth that was below the waterline. Now the waterline had a beard that looked like the dude from Z top. It was like legit nine inches long. That was the waterline. But as you went down, it was like a two inch growth. Now, that worst idea I was talking about earlier, that was the three and a half hour dive that had tons of growth that just didn’t move. If they use their boat more, it won’t grow as often because then that a blade of paint has a chance to work and all that stuff falls off. So that’s a good gauge for today, 4 to 6 weeks. Just a really, really heavy film. And then I would say about a year you’re starting to see muscles grow on there and heavy barnacles growing there.
Merrill [00:35:51] So when it comes to kind of hiring the diver or hauling out the boat, there’s all these thoughts about kind of how you should do it. Some people think that, hey, you know how the boat will just handle it on the hard. I’m kind of under the impression that the boat doesn’t really need to be hauled out all the time. And, you know, you can hire a diver. What’s your opinion on that?
Brian [00:36:12] I agree with you 100%. Having a diver go on your boat is good to see if you actually need to haul the boat. You don’t always have to haul a boat because first of all, it’s significantly cheaper from my knowledge. Also, to that the diver can tell the progression of how your pain is deteriorating, about how your anodes are deteriorating and your time and your effort. I mean, this is a day and age where everybody in the family works. It’s not like somebody can stay home and take care of it. You’re talking about a day out of work to haul your boat, the time to get it to a haul, the time to plan that. Now you need jacks, dance, all all of these things which could have been prevented or avoided if you had called a diver because we might have answered a lot of questions now. Divers don’t have all the answers, and divers can’t do everything underwater. Would I be willing to change a shaft underwater or a Cutlass bearing? No, because I know that’s out of my wheelhouse. Can it be done? Probably. But I would never do that. But a diver will tell when things need to be done, how they should be done. Just today, I had a person ask me about his propeller during the off season instead of him hauling the boat and changing his propeller. Come November, when he wraps his boat for the winter, I’m going to take off his propeller. I’m going to give him his propeller to have a go service skipper. That’s a feather and prop. Come April, he’s going to give it back to me. I’m going to reinstall the prop. So that’s something that just saved him a ton of dough, a ton of time and a ton of effort. So just to add something that’s near and dear to my heart, I’m actually the vice president of a veterans organization called Rolling Thunder. It’s a nonprofit organization. We try to give back to all of our veterans, our Gold Star families, current and previous wars. So what Jamie Underwater Services does, too, is if if a boat owner or a family member of a boat owner gets a hold of us for some work, we give them 15% off of all labor. It’s just our way of saying thank you to any kind of a service military person. So if we have a gold star mom or a wife or a husband of somebody that’s deployed, we’ll take 50% off the labor. And that’s just a way that job tries to give back to the community for the people that have given so much for our freedom. But my brother was a Seabee. My uncle was in Korea. My girlfriend was in Iraq. So it’s it’s it’s near and dear to me.
Talha [00:38:43] Brian, where can people find you and find out more about you? You have a website, Facebook page. What do you have up now?
Brian [00:38:49] Yeah. So our website is j B underwater services dot com. We have a Facebook page. Obviously, Jamie Underwater Services. And we have an Instagram page. JB Underwater services we can be emailed at. Brian b r. I am AJ and B underwater services dot com. John and Jamie Underwater services dot com. That’s my business partner.
Talha [00:39:14] Yup. And if you guys need some dive in the northeast, you know who to hit up. Yeah. Thanks so much for your time, Brian. Really appreciate.
Brian [00:39:21] It. Well, thank you very much, guys. I really, really had a good time doing this shipshape Dot Pro Navigate your.
Merrill [00:39:27] Way to trusted Marine professionals.
Speaker 4 [00:39:43] Check back every Tuesday for our latest episode and be sure to like, share and subscribe to shipshape. Dot pro. Dot pro.
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