Dumbest Thing You Have Done...

[Seb]

Giant stride holding eyeglasses and regulator firmly against face. ... Sheathing dive knife into imaginary sheath now in Davey Jones Locker....But the best was when we triple buddied with a videographer who felt the need to chase a stingray far away..this YMCA 1000+ diver had NO idea where the boat was, when we surfaced to check, he said "that's not our boat" (wrong, bucko, it sure is, and in the rain it's the only freaking boat here, see you later pal.) This guy then descended again when we reached the boat to get a shot of an anchor...
My personal best was loading all the gear in the car and going to Old Blue in Bonaire, I forgot our wetsuits. Thankfully it was Summer, and we hardly minded ( tho we sure had them on the NEXT dive)

 

[Laurence Stein DDS]

In Turks and Caicos--Got up early, wolfed my breakfast down, grabbed some extra food for the dive trip. Arrived at the boat--and the coffee "kicked in". That is when I discovered I was wearing my jockeys and not my bathing suit under my shorts!

Thank goodness I had a dive skin in my bag. Didja ever try to put one on in the head while the boat is pitching. I nearly drowned in the toilet--and the door wouldn't lock so I had to hold the door with one hand and whatever I wanted to stuff into the skin in the other.

I felt really stupid--a "senior moment"!

 

[Tractor Tom]

Diving with the folks from SCUBA on St. Croix in November of 2000. Had just completed a hour long refresher with DM in the pool and we had completed our first dive. After I returned to the boat, the DM changed tanks and left my rig (rented) ready to use, but with the tank 'bungied' to the rack on the back of the bench. We reached Salt River, and got ready to dive. I put on my gear, checked my rig with mask in hand, CAN'T stand up....oops, tank is still bungied to the rack. Get a little help from the DM, and a hand standing up, pick up my regulator, NO AIR. A little help please? I forgot to turn on the valve. Finally got in the water, at 60 feet, I had a steady leak in my mask, running water into my nose. Took the mask off and cleared it repeatedly, no good (worked just fine an hour before, at 85+, now it's leaking like a seive...)

Even at that, I had a great dive! It was soooooo good to be back in the water again. Can't wait for my new mask to come in (retired the old one) so I can take my refresher and OW cert.

Frankenmuth Tom

 

[jonnythan]

During our checkout dive for the Deep Diving section of our SSI AOW course last fall, one of the instructor's buddies came alone for the dive and to keep an eye on us. The instructor and his friend were buddies, while I had my own.

We get in the water and start to descend to the bottom 85-90 feet below. As we all collect around 85 feet, someone grabs my octo (at this time, I had a regular 36 inch octo hose attached in the golden triangle). I turn around, and it's the instructor's buddy, huffing and puffing on this Sherwood octo. His Odin is dangling next to him, free flowing. I grab the guy's BC and get an OK from him, then I tap my buddy on the shoulder and let him know I'm ascending now. I make eye contact with the OOA guy and we start to ascend, he's dragging me up a bit fast computer says around 65-70 fpm.

At 45 feet, the guy drops the octo and bolts to the surface. I continue ascending at my current rate, skip the safety stop, and meet the guy on the surface to check on him and find out what happened. Apparently he wasn't getting the air he wanted from the Odin, and he was freaking out and damn near hyperventilating on my Sherwood when he zoomed to the surface. He started breathing on his Odin at the surface and I took him down to 30 feet for a couple of minutes, then up to 15-20 where we sat for about 20 minutes waiting for the other divers to finish.

Lucky for us, we were both ok. In retrospect, I should have taken more time at the bottom to make sure this guy was calm and ready for an ascent.. he was completely freaking out when we started to go up. This also is one of the reasons I adopted the long hose design.. the 36" octo wasn't long enough for us to be face to face comfortably while he sucked down the air. Now I tell everyone I dive with to simply grab my primary (but please alert me first ) when it's an emergency. This was my first (and so far only) actual emergency OOA situation.

This may have belonged in a "scariest moments" discussion, but several dumb things happened on this dive and I hope I learned from them..

 

[Jarhead]

especially for us Newbies...

Not Yet!


KD4RFA

 

[amadeus00]

I though back rolling off of a live aboard (25m long) from the bow of the ship was a good idea. Felt like I was falling for an eternity before I hit the water. My dive buddy who saw me go in decided to head for the stern and climb in. Smart choice!

 

[dmmike]

Done the no air thing

Done the no weight thing

Done the decend with the snorkel thing

But the the worst was a night dive. We where all on the boat before it left the dock, laughing, clowning around, basicly not paying attention. The boat leaves we get to the dive sight, nobody, i mean nobody has the primary light, ask around about backup lights, nobody has them.

Had to come all the back to get the lights.

Lesson learned, always check your gear before the boat leaves the dock, save the clowning around for the trip back to the dock, and always tip the DM so he does not repeat the story...

 

[otter-cat]

But at least once per trip I stick my head through the neck seal of my drysuit BEFORE putting my arms in. You'd think I'd learn....

 

[art.chick]

Another leg tale:
My husband stood on the shore the day his instructor training try-outs began. He would have to do a make-up because his gout was acting up. He stood outside the surf leaning on his cane watching his future classmates enter & exit the winter surf. A diver began an exit, moving unremarkably. When he cleared the surf we noticed that he was walking with a cane that he had taken down with him. I can't say that I know that it made my guy feel wimpy, but it sure made the other guy look tough!

 

[luvdiving]

I didn't damage anything except my pride, but....

We were diving at about 45 ft. There were four or five in a loose buddy group and we had over 100 ft. visability. There was sand for as far as you could see, and I was bored.

The leader of the group was going really slow, looking through the sand. I found a really, really big eyebolt in the sand. It must have been two ft. long and weighed over twenty lbs. I thought I'd swim the eyebolt over the group leader and drop it in front of him. Remember, he was looking down the whole time.

The eyebolt turned out to be much too heavy for me to swim with, so I inflated my BC to help with the lift. Can you see where this is going? I swam the eyebolt to a good safe distance in front of the leader and dropped it. It was about then that I remembered my scuba Instructor saying that we should never use our BC's as a lift bag. Now I knew why!

It's amazing how small and hard to find the dump handle for the BC can become at times like this. However, I did find it and dumped my air as I was practicing "the flare".

Everything turned out for the best and I learned three things that day.
1. Never use a BC as a lift bag.
2. Think things through before acting.
3. Dive buddies have a loooooong memory:boom: