Ego and Diving

[WICKED_WIZARD]

Like drinking and driving, Ego and diving does not mix well.

As a current Naui Dive Master, I do a lot of dives and have seen some stupid things.
Here is one nice one.

Myself and two friends decided to dive the Fontao wreck just of Durban South Africa.
Very nice wreck that lies at 27 M with top at around 17M.
We booked a dive with a local dive operator that supplies their own DM.

On hearing that we where DM`s ourselves he had to go all out and impress us.
First he decided not to dive with a wetsuit. (20 degrees Celsius water) only shorts for him. The dive calls for an anchored dive on the wreck. On the way out I noticed the DM had no BC, but used a harness with back plate, thus he had no way to control buoyancy but his lungs. Taking that he had a steel 12L cylinder he was going to sink like a rock. The moment we stopped the fun started. Our hero DM decide that the skipper need not hook the anchor as he will swim it down and hook it up for him. All nice. So without any discussion our hero DM puts his kit on (that had one dv only, no octo) grabbed the anchor and his mask, then bailed over the boat. No fins for our hero DM. I had to smile to my friends, we decided to follow him in haste to check if he is ok. Found him luckily ok on the top of the wreck where he was hooking in the anchor. The dive was done with him walking on the wreck and us hovering behind him. He at some point overstepped the wreck and while nicely hovering behind our DM we just saw one DM suddenly disappear. Following quickly we saw him 10 meters below in a cloud of silt as he unceremoniously landed with his bum in the sand. He proceeded to lead the dive by walking and hopping around the wreck. Then at the end, he climbed back to the top of the wreck. At the end of the dive our Hero now had a problem to come up, but did not want any of us to take him up. He deployed the anchor boy and dried to ride it up, but was too heavy for the boy to take him and the boy up. So he resorted by hanging on the anchor, waiting for the skipper to howl in the line with him on the end. Needless to say, he was met with a furious skipper who had to howl up our DM and the anchor where the anchor would normally be floating on the surface by the boy. Our hero DM was shivering from the cold and could almost not speak through his blue lips.

We decided to have our laugh later when he was not with us.

 

[Zero]

What? No pictures? This would have made an excellence conversation piece!

 

[WICKED_WIZARD]

At times in the dive I was laughing so much for him that my dv almost dropped out of my mouth.
I think I would have been hard pressed to take pictures and not drop the camera while laughing.
My friends and myself still hose ourselves whenever we see him. Needles to say we do not dive with that charter as at the end they had no compressor to fill out cylinders and refused to refund us on a cylinder fill that is included in the price. Told us to leave our cylinders there till their compressor is repaired, no way.

 

[ShoalDiverSA]

LOL!

I can't believe the ego on some people. Given that you dived the Fontao, I can only assume that you used a certain Dive Charter (based in Umhlanga) (?). Anyway, I hope that the DM learnt something from this. Otherwise he may be in line for a Darwin Award soon (see my attempt for a nomination here).

Do you think the Fontao is worth the effort (excluding the novelty of the DM, that is)? I have heard mixed reports.

Cheers,

Andrew

 

[WICKED_WIZARD]

The wreck is def a must if you are into wrecks. There are two holds and a nice swim through with large openings with no cables or pipes or ragged edges to worry about.
DM's change on dives, so I would not worry to much about the charter, but there are two others, Aqua planet and underwater world you could try.

Had 4 students on course the weekend, and dived of alliwal. Spotted a whale shark and jumped in to snorkel with it. Ducked dive down and stroked its dorsal fin to make sure it does not dislike me, then help on with 3 fingers and went for a little ride. Awesome.

All the best.

 

[DiverBuoy]

You mean they're not synonomous terms, as in:

"You should have seen the vis we had on that ego we did to 40 feet this morning."
"I'm a certified Open Water Ego Instructor"
or
"Did you hear about the underwater ego that died? They say he went down to nearly 900 feet, using special ego equipment."

Man, you learn something new that shocks your world everyday.

 

[terrasmak]

Pics , na , we need a vid of that

 

[ShoalDiverSA]

Did some more digging and found out that this guy regularly dives in this "fashion" (note that I am using the word dive very loosely). So it was not just the DM's Special.

Cheers,

Andrew

 

[archman]

Hey don't knock the technique. It worked just fine for Captain Nemo.

 

[WICKED_WIZARD]

Would be nice if you can just go home and download all you saw for the day. Then you can capture those moments for others to see.

Had a another interesting ego dive the weekend. Not as funny, but still shows how people think that being a DM and some instructors. Makes them God. Was our second dive at alliwal RSA. And viz at 12 meters was about 20 meters, but at 25 meters deep it was only 8 meters. I had 4 students on nitrox course with me, and there where 5 other divers plus the DM. Soon as we settled on the bottom the DM just started fining and never looked back. Now alliwal is drift diving where you most of the time just drift over the reef and follow the DM. But he turned it into a fining contest. What made it worse was that the top current was different than the bottom and he was fining into the bottom current, but being pulled by his boy on the surface. So there was no way we could keep up. In fact most divers paid him no interest at the time as they where checking out the reef. 4 min into the dive I had 8 people with me and no DM. I knew the direction he took and was thinking he would soon realize he lost basically the whole group. Since I mostly do technical diving, I always have a deploy-boy with me and reels. Deployed my boy for the skipper to see, and rounded up the group. As we started to ascent he joined us, having gone to the surface, seen my boy and had he skipper drop him on it, telling him that I let the group away from him. The rest of the dive he managed to loose us 3 more times. And then he just disappeared. On surfacing, found him in the bout fuming and got rapped by the skipper for using my deploy boy. The DM went on how he is the DM and controls the dive and every one will follow him regardless. I kindly reminded him that as a DM you are only a guide and its your job to get the divers to stay with you. When the rest of the divers had their say for him just bolting off loosing then all, he just sat in the front fuming. I just thought that here you have a DM that is doing only for the money and not for the want of making other divers, dive more fun. The moment you take the job of leading a dive, your fun goes out the window and you are not dedicated to make diving saver and fun for the group, that's what you get paid for, not for trying to be a drill instructor and boss. If only some DM's would get it in their heads.