Blow out air to avoid an embolism.
What's the most intimidating dive you've done or thing that happened to you?
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Ojai Diver
Contributor
I was diving a local wreck - the African Queen, which sits outside the entrance to the Los Angeles Harbor, a major outlet of American consumerism. Giant container ships arrive from China around the clock with shiny goods (including dive gear destined for my household) while others depart with scrap metal back to Asia to be made into new products etc., etc.
Anyway, it is rather busy, and not exactly a scenic place to dive, but there are several wrecks out there, and here in Southern California, when it comes to wrecks, we can't be too picky.
The visibility had been lousy all day, perhaps 5 feet at the outside, so I wasn't expecting much. A current was running, and I descended the anchor line with my buddy, with whom I was not feeling particularly simpatico. We hit bottom at just over 90 feet. The wreck was to be just up current of the anchor. The visibility at the bottom was even worse than before - one to two feet, tops. It was like diving in a bad dream.
Using our compasses, we headed toward the wreck. A reel would have been useful, in hindsight.
The water was a dark green murk—and cold. Quickly, my buddy and I became separated. I stayed in one place, turned around a few times looking for him, but it was hopeless. I reversed course, went back to the anchor line, but could not find it.
Time to surface. For some reason, I fell back on the erroneous training of my long ago Open Water 1 course, and dumped the air from my wing before trying to surface--mistake. That's when I realized concretely what I had known mostly in abstract: that I was awfully negative at that depth. I pushed off from the bottom, and…came right back down.
I did not freak out, but it was disquieting. Then I swore at myself that I had a perfectly good wing, so why not add some air to it? Which I did, and came up in some graceless fashion.
Diving is full of Sobering Moments, and that moment at the bottom of the harbor was one of them. While I was not in danger, in that moment, alone, cold, the water dark as a sewer, I had the distinct feeling that this would be a lousy place to die. I thought about my wife and little boy, waiting for Daddy to come home from his day of diving, and how far away from them I felt at that moment.
Strange how beautiful diving can make you complacent, and how dark, cold diving in currents can turn intimidating.
(By the way, I thought about it a great deal since, and yes, I believe I could swim my rig up without my wing from that depth, but definitely with effort.)
When I surfaced, I was right where I was supposed to be, in front of the boat. The afternoon sun was a gift.
When I turned around, maybe 300 yards away, a huge container ship, all rusty and dirty looking, COSCO on the side in giant letters, passed by. Being in the water that close to a big ship made me feel small.
As I swam by the boat, my buddy leaned over the side and called my name. I thought he looked relieved… and maybe a little guilty.
When I got home, I did not mention my thoughts on the harbor bottom to my wife and boy.
Anyway, it is rather busy, and not exactly a scenic place to dive, but there are several wrecks out there, and here in Southern California, when it comes to wrecks, we can't be too picky.
The visibility had been lousy all day, perhaps 5 feet at the outside, so I wasn't expecting much. A current was running, and I descended the anchor line with my buddy, with whom I was not feeling particularly simpatico. We hit bottom at just over 90 feet. The wreck was to be just up current of the anchor. The visibility at the bottom was even worse than before - one to two feet, tops. It was like diving in a bad dream.
Using our compasses, we headed toward the wreck. A reel would have been useful, in hindsight.
The water was a dark green murk—and cold. Quickly, my buddy and I became separated. I stayed in one place, turned around a few times looking for him, but it was hopeless. I reversed course, went back to the anchor line, but could not find it.
Time to surface. For some reason, I fell back on the erroneous training of my long ago Open Water 1 course, and dumped the air from my wing before trying to surface--mistake. That's when I realized concretely what I had known mostly in abstract: that I was awfully negative at that depth. I pushed off from the bottom, and…came right back down.
I did not freak out, but it was disquieting. Then I swore at myself that I had a perfectly good wing, so why not add some air to it? Which I did, and came up in some graceless fashion.
Diving is full of Sobering Moments, and that moment at the bottom of the harbor was one of them. While I was not in danger, in that moment, alone, cold, the water dark as a sewer, I had the distinct feeling that this would be a lousy place to die. I thought about my wife and little boy, waiting for Daddy to come home from his day of diving, and how far away from them I felt at that moment.
Strange how beautiful diving can make you complacent, and how dark, cold diving in currents can turn intimidating.
(By the way, I thought about it a great deal since, and yes, I believe I could swim my rig up without my wing from that depth, but definitely with effort.)
When I surfaced, I was right where I was supposed to be, in front of the boat. The afternoon sun was a gift.
When I turned around, maybe 300 yards away, a huge container ship, all rusty and dirty looking, COSCO on the side in giant letters, passed by. Being in the water that close to a big ship made me feel small.
As I swam by the boat, my buddy leaned over the side and called my name. I thought he looked relieved… and maybe a little guilty.
When I got home, I did not mention my thoughts on the harbor bottom to my wife and boy.
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The African Queen can be a nice dive but that sounds like a day to abort early. I've found that when the vis is bad at the beginning of the dive it rarely improves. Sometimes it's better to dive another day.
Here's the African Queen on a good day.
Here's the African Queen on a good day.
stevensamler
Contributor
awesome pics as usual Phil.The African Queen can be a nice dive but that sounds like a day to abort early. I've found that when the vis is bad at the beginning of the dive it rarely improves. Sometimes it's better to dive another day.
Here's the African Queen on a good day.
The most intimidating dive I've done was the Tacoma Narrows. It was quite a rollercoaster ride and the speed of the current changed dramatically the farther you were from the bottom, such that it was hard to stay with my buddy (but we did). We did this via a boat dive, and for some reason, my buddy and I wound up much farther downstream than anyone else. I knew to use one of my longer DSMB's for that one.
But what a rush. We were really getting tossed around with different currents. It was much more intense than my shore dives into Deception Pass. I really want to do it again.
But what a rush. We were really getting tossed around with different currents. It was much more intense than my shore dives into Deception Pass. I really want to do it again.
TONY CHANEY
Contributor
Good stories and here are a couple of mine. Anyone that has dived Bolo Point off Okinawa, Jp knows that it can change very fast. So my buddy and I were going diving late at night. We enter the water by giant stride from the fisherman's ledge which is about 10+ feet above the water. So we splash and do our dive. We are coming up and during our safety stop we can feel the surge and can see the white wash from 20' below. We give each other the, "we are screwed," sign. (PM me and I will show you what it looks like). We shake hands and say goodbye, which is customary with us Marines. Once we clear out safety stop, we head toward the exit...solo. (you really do not want two bodies and tanks beating the heck out of each other) So you ride a surge toward the shore / sheer cliff. When the surge retreats you hold on to anything solid and wait for the next ride. So, we both made it out with a heck of a lot of cuts, scraps, sea urchin's spines, a lost fin and a lot of blood. I got home about a hour later and my wife looked at me and asked, "what happened, you look blue." I just said, "you do not want to know."
Buddy and I were diving the caves in Fla. We continued to ask about P3 but no one had been in there. So, we decide to dive it. We have the video going with the video lights. We descend and I run the reel. We get about a 150' into the cave when we "find" each other in the silt. There must have been less than 5 inches of vis. We signaled each other as to what in the heck are we doing in here. Got out and had a great rest of the week.
Buddy and I were diving the caves in Fla. We continued to ask about P3 but no one had been in there. So, we decide to dive it. We have the video going with the video lights. We descend and I run the reel. We get about a 150' into the cave when we "find" each other in the silt. There must have been less than 5 inches of vis. We signaled each other as to what in the heck are we doing in here. Got out and had a great rest of the week.
PeterNBiddle
Contributor
OP
Eric Sedletzky
Contributor
My worst current story.
So I'm on the Peace dive boat out at the Channel Islands a few years back with my buddy Jon and on this particular dive the captain decides to pick a spot very close to a known potato patch that is between Santa Rosa Island and Santa Cruz Island. The area I found out later was known for ripping currents. Some boat captains like to try and catch these spots on a slack tide because the diving can be really great.
So the boat anchors and the gates are open. We notice there is a slight current running by the way the kelp was all pointed in one direction so we decided to go up current then back with it to the boat. Every thing went as planned, but as we were diving we noticed the current had picked up considerably and when we looked up the giant kelp was almost laying down sideways. We were in 70 feet of water the entire dive, and the kelp was very long at this spot, probably over 80 or 90 feet maybe more. We drifted back to where we though we should about be and hung on to kelp as we went up. At my 15 foot stop I remember having my wing fully inflated just to maintain a steady depth and hanging onto a kelp stalk for dear life just flapping in the wind like a flag.
When we came up we were aimed perfectly in front of the boat and it looked like we could just drift right into it. So the boat got closer and closer and I though I was home free getting a river rapid ride when as soon as I got about 20 feet away from the boat it swung away and I wizzed right past it. They had a current line out and I fought like hell to get to it. I finally got to it about two feet from the end and it was a three hundred foot line! My buddy actually got to it about half way up but the rope wrapped around his tank valve and pulled him under while he was trying to undo it. But he managed to pull himself hand over hand and get to the swim platform.
Me, I started pulling hand over hand and after a while my grip started to fail. I even lost the rope for a second and lost about 30 feet of hard earned headway. I grabbed the rope again and kept trying, giving it all I had. I got maybe not even a quarter the way to the boat and my grip completely failed, shot, gone, couldn't even work my hands anymore. I lost the rope and was on my way to Hawaii. The boat started to get further and further away quickly and I was waving so they could see me. They fired up the chase boat and came and got me.
When I got back on board the captain apologized to everyone for putting us in such a current. Apparently I wasn't the only one who needed to get chased down, but since I was the last one to get back on the boat I didn't see that part.
That would be one piece of advice I could give anyone thinking of diving the Channel Islands, make sure they have a chase boat.
So I'm on the Peace dive boat out at the Channel Islands a few years back with my buddy Jon and on this particular dive the captain decides to pick a spot very close to a known potato patch that is between Santa Rosa Island and Santa Cruz Island. The area I found out later was known for ripping currents. Some boat captains like to try and catch these spots on a slack tide because the diving can be really great.
So the boat anchors and the gates are open. We notice there is a slight current running by the way the kelp was all pointed in one direction so we decided to go up current then back with it to the boat. Every thing went as planned, but as we were diving we noticed the current had picked up considerably and when we looked up the giant kelp was almost laying down sideways. We were in 70 feet of water the entire dive, and the kelp was very long at this spot, probably over 80 or 90 feet maybe more. We drifted back to where we though we should about be and hung on to kelp as we went up. At my 15 foot stop I remember having my wing fully inflated just to maintain a steady depth and hanging onto a kelp stalk for dear life just flapping in the wind like a flag.
When we came up we were aimed perfectly in front of the boat and it looked like we could just drift right into it. So the boat got closer and closer and I though I was home free getting a river rapid ride when as soon as I got about 20 feet away from the boat it swung away and I wizzed right past it. They had a current line out and I fought like hell to get to it. I finally got to it about two feet from the end and it was a three hundred foot line! My buddy actually got to it about half way up but the rope wrapped around his tank valve and pulled him under while he was trying to undo it. But he managed to pull himself hand over hand and get to the swim platform.
Me, I started pulling hand over hand and after a while my grip started to fail. I even lost the rope for a second and lost about 30 feet of hard earned headway. I grabbed the rope again and kept trying, giving it all I had. I got maybe not even a quarter the way to the boat and my grip completely failed, shot, gone, couldn't even work my hands anymore. I lost the rope and was on my way to Hawaii. The boat started to get further and further away quickly and I was waving so they could see me. They fired up the chase boat and came and got me.
When I got back on board the captain apologized to everyone for putting us in such a current. Apparently I wasn't the only one who needed to get chased down, but since I was the last one to get back on the boat I didn't see that part.
That would be one piece of advice I could give anyone thinking of diving the Channel Islands, make sure they have a chase boat.
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I'll tell a story about a dive that intimidated me because of assumptions. It was a good lesson for me to ask more detailed questions. Had I done so I would not have been nervous at all.
My first BHB dive I was told about the boat traffic. You have to have a flag and that you could not surface due to boat traffic being in an active Marina. I was also told it was tide dependent and you had to time it right so you could be out when the tide got too strong. I knew my buddies/friends did the dive regularly. My experience is that if you you are smart you listen to the locals, follow their advice and do exactly what they do or tell you to do. If you are careful on who "your local guides" are and you are a decent diver you can expand your experience quite safely although I guess some might call these "trust me dives".
So after listening to the dive brief and reading similar things about the site I had a picture in my mind of what to expect. That picture was based on a dive we have here .. the Swansea Drift dive.
The Swansea dive is an advanced dive and one I am very selective about who I will agree to take to do it. Swansea is Tide dependent. In the case of Swansea if you don't time it right the current will rip your mask off if you turn your head the wrong way. It is impossible to swim against. I watched a dive buddy grab onto what appeared to be just the handles of a shopping cart sticking out of the sand. We were surprised to see the entire shopping cart get pulled out of the sand where it had been buried because of the amount of resistance his body created for the current to push on. It covers a distance of 2km and I know someone who did it in under 10 minutes because he wanted to see how fast it was. He was a skilled diver but still didn't take it on when the tide was really rampped up! If you dive it the wrong time and miss the exit.. which can be easy to do ... you get swept out to sea which has a whole lot of other issues as it is done as a shore dive.
Swansea is an active water way and you CAN NOT surface unless you are at the very edge near the rock rubble that has been put in to control erosion. It is not just a matter of a bad idea to surface because boats might be moving around. There is an opening bridge that lets boats through at regular alternating intervals as boat traffic builds up. The boats go through quite quickly to make it through while the bridge is up and there may be quite a few boats at any given time. The chances of a diver being spotted in the midst of that is remote.. flag or no. Matter of fact I've never seen anyone with a flag at the site due to entanglement hazzards, task loading and the difficulty of managing on in the current!
So when I started into the water to do the BHB dive.. I was thinking it was like doing Swansea in a strange area where I didn't know the landmarks. When I felt the current start to build a bit and my buddy was happily taking pics and ignoring it... I started wondering if I had trusted the wrong buddy. We had been under a fair time and wandered around so much I really wasn't sure how far from the exit we were. I was expecting the tide to start ripping at any moment. I signaled my buddy, indicated how much air I had and asked where the exit was. I was shocked when my buddy surfaced momentarily to get a bearing.
Afterwards I realized that I had a different concept of things than my buddies. My lesson learned is that you really need to discuss and clarify what people mean when they say things like "Tide dependent" etc. I think my buddies would have been totally unprepared for Swansea if I just described it at Tide dependent and boat traffic.
My first BHB dive I was told about the boat traffic. You have to have a flag and that you could not surface due to boat traffic being in an active Marina. I was also told it was tide dependent and you had to time it right so you could be out when the tide got too strong. I knew my buddies/friends did the dive regularly. My experience is that if you you are smart you listen to the locals, follow their advice and do exactly what they do or tell you to do. If you are careful on who "your local guides" are and you are a decent diver you can expand your experience quite safely although I guess some might call these "trust me dives".
So after listening to the dive brief and reading similar things about the site I had a picture in my mind of what to expect. That picture was based on a dive we have here .. the Swansea Drift dive.
The Swansea dive is an advanced dive and one I am very selective about who I will agree to take to do it. Swansea is Tide dependent. In the case of Swansea if you don't time it right the current will rip your mask off if you turn your head the wrong way. It is impossible to swim against. I watched a dive buddy grab onto what appeared to be just the handles of a shopping cart sticking out of the sand. We were surprised to see the entire shopping cart get pulled out of the sand where it had been buried because of the amount of resistance his body created for the current to push on. It covers a distance of 2km and I know someone who did it in under 10 minutes because he wanted to see how fast it was. He was a skilled diver but still didn't take it on when the tide was really rampped up! If you dive it the wrong time and miss the exit.. which can be easy to do ... you get swept out to sea which has a whole lot of other issues as it is done as a shore dive.
Swansea is an active water way and you CAN NOT surface unless you are at the very edge near the rock rubble that has been put in to control erosion. It is not just a matter of a bad idea to surface because boats might be moving around. There is an opening bridge that lets boats through at regular alternating intervals as boat traffic builds up. The boats go through quite quickly to make it through while the bridge is up and there may be quite a few boats at any given time. The chances of a diver being spotted in the midst of that is remote.. flag or no. Matter of fact I've never seen anyone with a flag at the site due to entanglement hazzards, task loading and the difficulty of managing on in the current!
So when I started into the water to do the BHB dive.. I was thinking it was like doing Swansea in a strange area where I didn't know the landmarks. When I felt the current start to build a bit and my buddy was happily taking pics and ignoring it... I started wondering if I had trusted the wrong buddy. We had been under a fair time and wandered around so much I really wasn't sure how far from the exit we were. I was expecting the tide to start ripping at any moment. I signaled my buddy, indicated how much air I had and asked where the exit was. I was shocked when my buddy surfaced momentarily to get a bearing.
Afterwards I realized that I had a different concept of things than my buddies. My lesson learned is that you really need to discuss and clarify what people mean when they say things like "Tide dependent" etc. I think my buddies would have been totally unprepared for Swansea if I just described it at Tide dependent and boat traffic.
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Something like that happened to us once on the same boat ... up near San Miguel Island. Difference is that the chase boat had to come pick up every diver ... we didn't even come close to the granny line ...
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
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