Craziest thing you've done to save a dive

[porgyhunter]

Two times come to mind for me. Forgot my anchor for my boat, so I grabbed a rectangular stone from a stone wall, roughly 50 lbs and it worked! Helped there was no wind. Other time forgot my B.C. and fashioned a rope backpack. Didn't mind crawling on the bottom cause I was after Bugs. I know there are more outlandish stories than these!!!!

 

[Gerbs]

The rumour that I can tune a regulator by torchlight and feel at 2 degrees below freezing is greatly exaggerated... never did get that V32/Proton Ice to work properly that night, did the dive with only one regulator (the trusty MR22/Abyss).

Gerbs

 

[KarolinaKid]

Borrowed the wing nuts from the marine battery on the dive boat for my buddy (his boat) who found, upon assembling his gear, that someone had abscond with the wing nuts for his back plate.

 

[DiverLS]

Last Saturday at Lake Tahoe I was in my new DUI drysuit, custom fit, and wanted to do valve drills. I couldn't do them with my old Drysuit. Well, got to 25 feet and right ear wouldn't clear. Rats! I really need to practice valve drills before going to Florida the end of this month. So I tried and tried and tried. My Snuggle Buddy had a Sensus detector tied to my backplate. I forgot how many times I went to the surface trying to clear that ear. Finally I heard the squeeeeeek and it cleard. Yes - I did my valve drills. One thing to quit worrying about.

 

[DMDavid]

I've yet to be in such a position because of my O.C.D. that always keeps me overly and redundantly prepared
So much so that my dive buddies are always telling me that I pack too much, but their laughter and ridicule seems to end as soon as they need a spare part that I happen to have six of.

 

[cloudflint]

Heading round to an island for our second dive in the club rib and suddenly we went to turn the corner and discovered the steering wheel wasn't turning the engine any-more. We wanted to do the second dive so we disconnected the steering gear and lashed a couple of ropes round the engine and a couple of us sat at the back steering the engine.

Also lost a fin while snorkelling down a river. Since they where my scuba fins and i was planning on diving in a couple of days I knew i couldn't dive without them so I realised i had to get the lost one back. I was wearing an old horsecollar BC with a suicide bottle on it at the time so i ended up swimming search patterns along the bottom of the river with one fin breathing off my bailout bottle till it ran out and i had to surface.

 

[TSandM]

Showed up at a dive site on Maui without my fins. So we did the dive with Peter towing me.

Showed up at our local underwater park without my dry suit boots, so I stuck my Crocs on over my socks and dove with them (and spent the whole dive putting my fins back on).

Saturday, I went to do a reconnoiter dive at a site in Lake Washington, and realized after I got in the water that I had taken off too much weight for the aluminum tank I was using. So I picked up the biggest rock I could find and carried it through the whole dive (20 minutes, max depth 40 feet). Peter had TWO rocks

Went all the way out to Davidson Rock one day, and realized when we got there that the battery on the boat had died. We did the dive, and when it was time to go home, we had the guy in the other boat disconnect his battery, hand it over to us, we got our boat started, and gave him back his battery. Thank goodness the motor didn't stall on the way home!

Got to our local mudhole one day and discovered my computer battery was dead. No one had a spare, so I did the dive anyway, using my buddy's Liquivision (and it was pretty funny, because I know that particular dive so well that I'd ask myself before I looked at his gauge, "How long have we been down, and what depth are we at?" And I was never more than two or three minutes, or five feet off.)

Forgot my gloves once, and borrowed a set of extra large 3 mil gloves (this is in Puget Sound, mind you) from somebody at the site. Found out that, if you pull the Velcro on the wrists REALLY tight, the gloves don't have to be thick to be warm!

My buddy showed up one day without his wing. He did the dive anyway, using his drysuit for buoyancy.

I read this and think, "Wow, what a lot of rules we've broken!"

 

[Mr Carcharodon]

Did a dive once where my buddy forgot to fill his tank. He was about one third full to start. Used my long hose to donate air for the first part of the dive. We both finished using or own tanks. It ended up being a pretty normal dive.

 

[kanonfodr]

A dive buddy forgot their cambands to their backplate for single tank usage so I donated one of mine and pulled some bungees out of my Jeep and tied them TIGHTLY down around the tanks. Worked great.

Planned to do a dive with my amazingly negative Asahi HP120 but upon entering the water we discovered my wing had a hole in it. So I swapped tanks to one of my LP85s and did the dive pseudo-vintage style, barely had any gas in the wing.

Peace,
Greg

 

[Graeme Tolton]

I was on a boat a few weeks ago in the river.. There were 4 of us on the boat, me, my buddy and another couple. The dive was a technical drift dive. Me and my buddy set a max depth for that dive of 130', 25 min BT. The other couple were planning 25 min at 150'. I was diving air on OC, while my buddy was diving Trimix CCR, In the other group one diver was also diving air OC with her buddy being also trimix ccr. We were almost at the dive site when we heard a loud POP, HIIIISSSSSS... The second CCR diver's (not my buddy) diluent inflator had exploded, caused by a spiking IP in his first stage, evident by the burst enviro seal.

At this point, we all went through our save a dive kits and found enough gear to put together an OC rig, minus sufficient weight and an OC computer. The dive started off well, not realizing that he was signifigantly underweighted for the dive, with al80 doubles. Me and my buddy separated from the other couple at the beginning of the dive and re-connected with them at the start of the deco stops.

When we met back up with them, the one diver was literally sitting on top of the other, keeping him down. I was doing my deco on 50% and 100%, so my deco was relatively short. They, on the other hand were doing deco on air and had 30+ minutes!.

In the end everything worked out, but it was definitely a learning experience. Sometimes it's not worth the risk of patching together a dive that just wasn't meant to be!