I am following this post and I agree with what Boulderjim just stated about the difference of recreational and tech diving and planning for the "ceiling". In August 2004, my wife, myself and a friend were staying at the then Reef Club resort and did dives with the resort's dive shop (don't remember their name but they were not good). We did two morning dives, the Santa Rosa wall and I believe the Paso del Cedral wall.The first dive was a total cluster----' with the DM taking us into the current until HE got swept away. We then aborted the dive at that point. The next dive, we were riding the current after descending to a depth of 102 feet and just slowly cruising the reef wall as we slowly ascended. (The plan) At about 80 feet, we came upon what I would describe as a sand wash. An area of the reef devoid of coral, just sand. As we tried to cross this area which was maybe 30 to 40 feet in width, we got caught in a downdraft. Our friend swam into the current until he could grab hold of thoe reef on the other side, I pushed my wife across until she too could grab the reef. I was swept further down until about 120 ft where I finally made it out of the downdraft. Immediately saw above me the videographer (who was buddied to our friend) signal that he was low on air. I got to him and handed off my alternate. We then ascended and
Met up with my wife and friend and went to safety stop depth. When we first hit this downdraft, we were probably 45 to 50 minutes into our dive and the three of us had 1200 to 1600 psi at the time. At the safety stop, probably not more than five or six minutes later, the three of us were at 500 to 600 psi. The video guy was out of air.
We shared air until we were all almost out and then we surfaced. Longer than the three minute safety stop but I didn't record that time. What I remember most immediately after the dive was the feeling that at 120 feet, my 12 pounds of weight felt like I had 50 pounds on. The other memory was that at that depth adding air in my BC had no immediate effect. Although I was sharing air on the ascent and at safety stop I was still shocked at how fast my remaining 1600 psi got consumed. My point of adding this story is not to say how good or how lucky I was, I had 300 plus dives when this had occurred, it is to say no matter your experience level, when you run across a situation that is new to you, you are not "experienced". Would I dive again in Cozumel, certainly and in fact will be doing so the week of September 19. I totally agree with the above post that the dive ops on Cozumel have come a long way in the past decade. Their safety record shows that. I think of my episode as a learning experience for which I am grateful to be able to learn from without it becoming serious. Further, I was with a diver who had a serious DCS hit on a 70 foot dive with no current and spent six hours in a chamber. It was the third dive on a trip to the Turks and Caicos with calm waters and no contributing factors evident as to why he took a hit. Diving does have risk, it also has the thrill, allure and beauty that calls us. When I leave this earth I will be glad for all the joys I have known and not worry about the things I have missed. PPS. Thanks to this board I have a wealth of info on how to deal with downdrafts.
