Lets see the big long list of things that have gone wrong for me. Some of them have been my own fault, trying to go too fast in learning how to dive, others have not been some of those have been equipment failures.
My first problem began with dive number one. I was using different equipment to everyone else on my open water (I owned all of my own equipment - even computer). So I would be using a different configuration than everyone else. One of things I had that nobody else did was integrated weights. So I was using the integrated weights and a weightbelt, because I felt in my limited experience mind that would be safer.
But knowing very little about how much to put on to accomplish the task of sinking I felt I had to ask, so I shouted out to the instructor "I've got eight k in my weight pockets, how much should I have around my belt." I got an answer of eight k back, I looked around and saw that everyone else was using about eight k on weightbelts, now I was pretty fat back then and knew that fat caused buoyancy, but I felt that eight k was a bit excessive. I asked again and got the same answer.
So I loaded the belt up with eight healthy kilos of lead and jumped in the water. I soon found out that I hadn't tightened a fin strap enough and off fell the fin. So after a brief search and recovery for the dm (Where it was recovered by a different diver and passed to me while she was still hunting it). I tightened it up and started my first descent.
It was a little quick, but I managed to equalise and start to get some semblance of buoyancy, although my BCD seemed to need a fair bit of tank juice to get my going. We did the necessary getting used to being in water and I had a decent enough time, then came the second problem. You see sixteen kilo's is enough to get a person underwater and also enough to keep them there. Or at least that was what it seemed, it had all been so much easier in the pool, where I had been able to slowly ascend and have things nice and easy. But here, in this water. I was finning up, and finning pretty hard, I just wasn't going in the right direction.
My instructor came over and helped me ascend, he soon realised the problem when we surfaced, way too much weight and had assumed everyone was diving on the same equipment and that nobody was using integrated weights. We agreed that I would halve the weight on the weightbelt, and halve the weight in the bcd pockets.
So I learned a lesson, never assume anything and make sure your straps are done up tightly. I got over this and passed my open water.
The second disaster was one I witnessed. I was doing my advanced and learning how to dive in a dry suit. I like my dry suit now, it used to be tricky for me to dive it. But the last few dives I've really gotten the hang of it. It's great.
I was combining my dry suit course with the aow. I would make six dives on the weekend, although after what happened on the deep the instructors were both happy to sign me off on dry suit without doing dive two. So what happened. Well for my third ever dry suit dive, I had to make a free ascent while searching for my buddy who had left the group to make sure someone didn't die.
It had been such a nice dive, we'd gone down and the instructor had started showing the whole colour changing at depth thing. I had got bored of looking at a rainbow weightbelt and started to make my own fun, by shining my torch on things to see what colour they really were. Having seen me doing this, the instructor promptly borrowed my little torch, and used it to demonstrate this with some proper colour. We then moved off to do a little tour of a wreck, with my torch back I happily peered into little crevices around the attraction and then looked around. Shapes that looked like divers were dissapearing into the gloom.
So I had to meet them. I decided that going straight up might cause me to miss the stop and miss them, and then they might be worried for a bit, vis was bad and should one dive down to look for me they could well miss me by a large margin. My decision was, I shall start my ascent, nice and slowly and then by swimming towards where I last saw them we should meet each other. We did meet up. They were on the safety stop when I parked myself alongside, nice and neutral. I soon diagnosed the problem one of the other divers was missing a weightbelt. It had popped off. He was being held, by the resiliance of another diver who had wrapped himself into the line.
Once we surfaced we soon realised what had happened, the diver hadn't fastened his weightbelt properly, leaving it liable to open while underwater and once devoid of weight, he went up.
The lesson I learned from this was, make sure the belt is fastened and tight and check the other divers. Weights does not just mean are you wearing them?
After my advanced course I felt elated and deligted, almost filled with wonderment. I could dive and dive well. So I booked myself onto a trip, to the Farnes Islands. Here things started to go wrong again. The seas were rough, I was a little unsure of myself, the boat was tiny and the water was bloody cold. Still I had my dry suit and things couldn't really go that wrong. I was diving with experienced people, these guys had thousands of dives each. What could the problem possibly be.
Well it seems I didn't know nearly enough about dry suits as I thought I did. I had never dived in the sea, let alone the sea when it was a bit rough. So I didn't know things could be bad.
The dive conditions, well to be frank they were awful. But because I didn't know what to expect, because I had never had good conditions to base my judgement thought, this isn't that bad, I mean it could be worse. Well one metre vis and blackwater is bad. Throw in heavy swell at the surface, inexperienced diver and things get worse.
Two things went badly for me, One was deploying an SMB, I managed to tangle my reel and then tangle my instructors reel while he was trying to fix mine (I don't know how it happened, it just happened) and the other was more dangerous. I couldn't hold a stop. I might of been wearing too much weight, I may of had too much air in at the start of the ascent. Either way, I just couldn't stop.
The lesson I learned was, no matter what you think you can do in a given piece of equipment, practise it's use before trying to use it and dry suits require you to know your buoyancy inside and out. If you don't you will make mistakes and you will be a danger to yourself.
Moving on to the next problem. This was in Egypt and the sea was wonderfully clear. I had never dived in good conditions and it would be a week long trip exploring the Red Sea. Here I would make some good decisions and some bad ones.
To cut a long story short the lessons I learned in Egypt, where 1) Always inspect a camera O-Ring like a hawk 2) You and only you are responsible for monitoring your own depth 3) Know when you really shouldn't dive (This wasn't a lesson I learned in the water, I passed on a dive in the morning because I hadn't gotten a decent sleep 4) Don't try to learn everything about diving before dive one hundred, you can't take it all in instead take it slowly and build your skills up, then add to them.
Fortunately by now things slowly started to turn around for me. I started to get the hang of this diving lark. So I decided to do my rescue course. This was where I had equipment problem number two and buddy problem number one. Rescue is a great course and I've posted this before so I'll just summarise. It was the final dive of the course, the simulation and when I started the lift, my regulator went into free flow. I signalled the fact I had a problem to my buddy, he didn't recognise it, I pointed to the bubbles, nothing. So I had to swim up, and I went up a little too fast for my buddy's liking, who thinking I didn't have a problem tried to slow me down. He got shoved off by a safety diver and when we surfaced started out by having a go at me for making a quick ascent. Safety diver surfaces, turns my tank off - no I couldn't reach my valve - and we finish the scenario.
Lesson I learned, fundamentally on every dive you are alone. A buddy can help you if they know you have a problem. You need to have absolute faith in the people you are diving with and absolute faith that they will react to your problems safely. If you have a serious problem and your buddy doesn't recognise it, NEVER trust them again and NEVER dive with them again.
After the course I was offered a DM internship by the center, I didn't have enough dives to even start the course, but they told me that they would help out with that and gave me the coursework books to mull over. The last time I was there they offered me the course again. Of course I've learned other little lessons without being in any danger, one was to always test equipment in the safest environment a swimming pool before going to open water. That was how I worked out that having a camera lanyarded to my right hand was a bad idea (it got in the way when I tried to do a regulator recovery) and I changed the way I rig my camera.
On every dive you should learn something, it might be so small you don't realise it, or it might be a fundamental wow moment that changes the way you dive forever. In my opinion the only bad dive is the one where you don't learn something because you think you know it all. I've recovered from all my little incidents and still love diving. I'm going back to Egypt and really looking forward to it. I'm hoping to move onto more technical diving soon but I want to have a nice chat with my instructor about it.
