Clearly, I lack a brain sometimes

[Hitdbeach]

What site was this?

I think they call it both "5 caves" and "5 graves" right next to McKenna landing . Super easy dive..usually. Lots of turtles and one time a bunch of mana rays, and some neat little caves to crawl around in.

 

[AfterDark]

It sound to me like you got yourself into a bad situation, and then did many things very right, so that we got to read about it. And had any one of several things gone better at the beginning, it wouldn't even have been much of a story. Had you navigated better, the bad conditions would have been an annoyance. Had the weather not deteriorated, the bad navigation would have been nothing more than a nuisance.

It's good to be conservative as a diver, but if you never do anything that stretches your comfort zone, you never learn what you are capable of doing. I know I have learned far more from the dives that didn't go as planned than the hundreds that were purely routine. You learned a lot from this one -- not only about skills you needed, and better judgment, but you learned that you keep your head about you when you are stressed, and solve problems calmly. That's a great thing to know, and a great quality to have.

I agree with you in principle on this you don't really know for sure if you can get yourself out of a tight spot real world until you actually do it. On the other hand if conditions don't look too good from shore why go looking for trouble? If one dives long and often enough trouble will find you.