Bad experience....have you got over it?

[boogeywoogey]

I know every diver has had a scare....it keeps you alive...

I'll briefly tell you mine and how I am just still getting over it...and your stories are welcome...

Immediately before I moved to Curacao, I had a last dive in the lake in Luxembourg. It's basically cold diving...depth 35-40m pitch black and 2 celcius,

My mask got kicked off and I was breathing rapidly waiting for my buddy to come for me...I stuck my back up leaky mask on....coughing and spluttering at 32m,

My buddy was immediately there but it seemed eternal...he kicked the mask off in the first place...I callled the dive..we surfaced, he was great.

I arrived in Curacao a week later. I did a 50m dive to try and get back on the horse but I sufferred for about 5 months...I got the panics when I saw my guage at 25m.

I hated myself being around divers going to 35 m and I said no....when a few weeks earlier they would have crapped their pants on my dives under the ice to 45m.

I think every diver has a crisis of confidence at some point or other.....tell me yours.

boogey

 

[boogeywoogey]

For it is the doom of divers that they forget....

REMEMBER and tell...

No task loading stories pls...that's your own fault.

boogey

 

[Jim Ernst]

first boat dive ever, dive #20, buddy and i were dropped off by our instructor,end of the breakwater wall, we desended to 57 feet and once on the bottom i noticed my mask was leaking badly, i tried to fix-clear it and each time i kept blowing my reg out, bad mouth piece and a rooky, after three repeats of this i think i panicked or just got frustrated, panicked in my opinion , and then shot from 57 feet stright to the surface, the only thing i did do right was exhale all of the way up, but i exhaled way to fast and as i could see the surface, i think i was at about 15 feet deep, i ran completly out of air and i wanted to gasp and inhale water, though i made it, i didnt think i would!!! scared the hell out of me, talked and then explaind to instructor and then took a break , and on too the next dive an hour latter. sence then i have had reg kicked out of mouth, aaayyy no big deal did the sweep and put it back, and i have had a rental reg literally fall apart at 20-30 feet, no big deal, grabbed octo, picked up the peices and called the dive, bought all of my own gear right away!! i was also baddly pummeled in malibu, scary , but i still dive, will keep diving and learning to the end. lol i love and am addicted to diving!!!

 

[boogeywoogey]

Jim,

good to hear people acknowleding ****ups. I was reading some of the DIR posts (in a different thread) and get one of them to admit any racing heart beat at 60m will be like trying to get a hotel room with water in New Orleans.

Mistakes make the diver. Redundancy gets you home.

boogey

 

[Jim Ernst]

Jim,

good to hear people acknowleding ****ups. I was reading some of the DIR posts (in a different thread) and get one of them to admit any racing heart beat at 60m will be like trying to get a hotel room with water in New Orleans.

Mistakes make the diver. Redundancy gets you home.

boogey

oh, but they are dir, and they are fully trained pro divers from birth!!!!! lol

 

[nwfellah]

In Kauai I had a 4 ft whitetip charge me on a night dive(thought the dive light was food maybe???) I punched his snout with my C8 when he was right at my waist and he we didnt see him after that. I burned through a lot of air really fast on that dive but we finished off the rest of the dive. The next day I went on another dive and the instructor let us pet a slightly larger whitetip which was resting on the bottom. That was really good for me to help keep my heart rate/breathing under control for the rest of the shark sitings on that trip. I am still a little leery when I see sharks cruising by on dives though.

 

[octgal]

On my 4th dive ever, so no not certified yet, my BC started to free flow (at 50 feet) i had some idea what was going on, however not completely, certainly never thought of trying to unhook the BC, well I had no time really to think as i was rocketing up to the surface, i did think clear enough to do the emerg asent config, and luckly caught my instructor on the way up, he unhooked my BC and waited a few moments before surfacing. Now this could have ruined diving forever for me, but i got back in the water that afternoon....a little nervous, but so glad it happened to me!!!!!

 

[WyCal]

Two friends and I got certified in Hawaii. Two of our check-out dives were shore dives, and several of our dives after certification were shore dives on the Big Island. When we got home to L.A. we decided shore diving was no big deal, so went out on about dive #10 to a local shore diving spot. As I entered the water about knee deep, a wave came and knocked me off my feet. I landed prone, parallel to the shore, and as the wave went out I rolled out with it; when the next wave came in, I rolled in towards shore only to roll back out with it. It seemed like the waves were coming in rapid succession and I kept rolling back and forth; I couldn't get up because I was LMAO. My two buddies were a long time coming to "rescue" me because I think they were also LTAO. Anyway, they finally got me to my feet and we made the dive through the surf with no further incident.

 

[dpbishop]

Took my GF and another couple on my boat to Catalina for a week of diving. On the third day or so, we anchored at Ship Rock for a dive. I was so busy helping everyone else get geared up and in the water, I forgot to check my spg before going in. Dropped down to 80 feet to check the anchor lie and ran out of air. The Dive shop had not filled that tank, although it came back capped. More pissed than paniced during the emergency assent, but it sure was a lesson in checking everything twice.

 

[lissette]

I remember having a heart pounding incident last year during my ow course, I was only on my third dive so not yet certified and still pretty nervous. We were doing out second boat dive of the day in about 20mtrs of water with a blue water descent.

Initially everything was ok on the surface but then we started to go down.
I always took my time on my descents, but this time for some reason I was sinking reallly fast, much faster than everyone else and really begining to stress as I just couldnt slow down.
There was no rope to guide us or to hold on to, and I was finning as i was sinking in a futile effort to slow down, but all i was really achieving was getting myself out of breath on top of a fast approaching panic.

It didnt occur to me to use my bc, and I hit the bottom well before everyone else and very much out of breath.

My buddy landed soon after me and signaled 'ok' and i signaled back i was fine...after all I was on the bottom and I was fine ...wasnt i?
I thought all i needed was a minute or two to catch my breath, but i didnt seem to be able to. My heart was pounding a mile a minute and i consciously tried to slow and deepen my breathing.... but I just couldnt get enough air and I was begining to panic!

I remember looking around me and being absolutely convinced that there was no way in this world that I would ever see the surface again, and i was surprisingly quite calm about it.
I remember thinking that i just needed to get a really deep breath and then i would be fine...and if i took my mask and reg off i could get that breath that i so desperately needed....
At the same time as these thoughts were running through my head I was also just remembering to breathe in... breathe out...breathe in.... breathe out..and trying really hard to logically think out what i needed to do from here.
It was soo very hard to work through the fog of panic to what i had to do.

I decided that i had to get to the surface and looked over at my instructor. He was caught up with another student and was only a few meters away, but for me it felt like it was an eternity away and there was no way i could ever reach him.
This was totally illogical but at the time it made perfect sense.

My buddy was right next to me so I signalled him that i wasnt ok and i was going to the surface. I slowly headed for the surface and was amazed when i got there, I really really didnt think i would. My buddy reached over and inflated my bc and asked if i was ok, then my instructor surfaced next to us to see what was going on. I said i was fine and needed to go back to the boat, so my instructor watched as i swam back to the boat.

The relief when i got back aboard was just amazing. I handed my rental bc to the divemaster and he looked a little perplexed with it. He reached into the pockets and pulled out 12 pounds in extra weight!!
It was a rental bc and some other students had used it earlier on in the morning and forgot to take the weights out.
I had noticed it was heavier when it was handed to me in the morning but because it was soaking wet I just ignored the extra weight. I guess that my oversight there just started a whole chain of events that resulted in a very undesirable situation.

I can honestly say that i have never been more terrified in my entire life and I hope i never will be again! It took everything that i had to get back into the water the next weekend to finish my course. I learnt a couple valuable lessons that day that I will never ever forget!