An argument for always having a snorkel

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cfelliot

Contributor
Messages
577
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Location
Portland, Maine
# of dives
200 - 499
Last week while doing our morning drop-off dive at Coco View in Roatan I had a learning experience.

At Coco view the second boat dive is a drop-off dive on either Newman’s Wall in the southwest or Coco View Wall in the Northeast side of the channel. You then swim to shore. On this dive we were dropped at Newman’s.

We, group of 4, were coming in with the wall to our left and were at about 90 ft. Somehow, we crossed the channel and were headed out Coco View wall. Bad mistake in that we all assumed the wall was still on our left and didn’t check our compass heading – lesson #2, group consciousness isn’t always right!!

We came up to 45ft at 750psi and surfaced at 500psi, but had gone a fair distance down Coco View wall. I was down to 250psi after the SS.

What would have been a simple surface swim back in the other direction became a pain in the ^%^%^ back swim rafting on the BCDs.

I will never dive again without a snorkel!
 
Not to be all harsh about it, but...

Why blame the lack of a snorkel for your long crappy surface swim instead of the crappy navigation?

Rachel
 
What exactly is so hard about swimming on your back ? (unless you're monsterously overweighted).
 
Not to be all harsh about it, but...

Why blame the lack of a snorkel for your long crappy surface swim instead of the crappy navigation?

Rachel

Be as harsh as you want.

I admitted that navigation caused the problem, but a snorkel would have made the solution much easier!
 
Hardly an argument for carrying a small plastic tube though. You said yourself you had air left so swim face down in the water looking at it. You're on the surface - provided you dont completely empty the tank theres no harm in breathing it down.
 
I brought my snorkel with me to CocoView ... even used it once in the shallows out in the front yard. The snorkeling there's great.

I don't think I've used it since ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)
 
Not to be all harsh about it, but...

Why blame the lack of a snorkel for your long crappy surface swim instead of the crappy navigation?

Rachel

I think that everyone makes mistakes, I do not think I know one single person that is perfect all the time. The OP simply said with a snorkel the swim would have been easier.

On the Navigation piece, I know some great underwater navigators, ie army sf, and navy seals. They even get disorientated sometimes, and they surface and make a longer surface swim. For the OP, they have snorkels.
 

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