Embarassing Moment - Shore Dive FAIL

[nolatom]

Education through embarrassment is not that bad a teaching method, and being able to laugh about it after you're safe, helps.


Or as I once heard it, "Mother Nature is a tough teacher, she gives the test first and the lesson afterwards".. ;-)

 

[Bigd2722]

Be sure and check for sand everywhere. When it happened to me, I didn't get all the sand out for months. Even took the reg in for service and still found sand in it. But that's another story about why I don't take my regs into a dive shop for service anymore

 

[j yaeger]

wicked story with a good ending!!!!
i did a nice little "embarassing moment" in bvi at a snorkling spot!
eden!!great family place! heaven!!!
when we got there,5 ft. surf,nobody's ever seen this...blah blah...
my son and i rambo'd in-i got smucked-mask went off-did i mention i wear stonggg glasses???
lost mask...had to buy cheapo script one for afternoon dive from charter....
and they called the place "the baths!"""""
still pissed!!
lifes little learning moments!!!!!
have fun
yaeg

 

[tdtaylor]

Went with a group to Cape Anne, my buddy with more than 5,000 dives. We wanted to do 2 dives, so the tide was a little low when we started...over the 200 feet of rounded, slick rocks, both of us with full camera outfits. Well, my buddy went down first, on his back. After asking if he needed help, as if I could have helped, he said he had it under control. None of us laughed, for who knew who was going down next....try me. fortunately I was ready. In the end, four of us ended up crawling our way out- thank God no one had a video camera on shore. We all almost drowned from laughing so hard (but really sore later). Bottom line, it was a fantastic dive, and coming in and the second dive was better as the tide was much higher. I WILL never find fault or humor at issues with shore diving... unless it is me.

 

[TSandM]

I lost a $200 prescription mask, getting rolled in the surf at Laguna Beach. But the really awful one was getting rolled on exit at Monastery, where the waves were almost 12 whole inches tall . . . Monastery has its own unique challenges. I was being rolled in the washing machine and thinking, "I'm okay, I've got TONS of gas," until my backup reg got Monastery sand in it and began to freeflow, and the whole equation changed. One of my teammates was in the process of giving himself a hernia, trying to lift me and my doubles to my feet, while my loving and caring husband was beating feet for the car to get the camera, so he could get the whole event documented.

 

[jar546]

Shore diving behind some houses in Aruba in an area called Rocky Beach. We were told what landmark to look for when returning. Both my buddy and I mistook the turning point and started heading east as directed. It got shallow quick on some rocks and we were both wearing shorties. We missed our mark by about 70 feet. There were breaking waves over our head when we looked up but it was too late. After we both got beat up and finally got to shore, the skinned knees and fire coral burn started to set in.

Another time up north I was standing on a floating dock trying to put my fins on without anything to hold on to. The dock moved as I was putting on my second fin and I fell forward causing the fin to propel itself into the water and start to sink. I instinctively reached forward even more which caused me and my st 120 to fall and roll to the left off the dock. There was another 10 minute delay until we found my fin in thick weeds at about 12' down.

No, you are not alone



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[UforSCUBA?]

Loving the stories! I'm definitely not feeling lonely now!

May all your shore dives in 2013 be tumble free!

 

[cloudflint]

Ive been there a few times I remember once snorkelling down a small rapid in a river and losing my fin. The water was a few meters deep and I had an old horse-collar on so I ended up diving down and breathing off the wee suicide bottle swimming a search pattern in the river on one fin while the rest of the group had a good laugh. Suffice to say with the current and the water being pitch black I never found it.

Luckily there was a few sets of old jet fins lying around our dive club hut so I was told I could take one of those saving me having to buy a new pair. My first outing with them was in a river by an old jetty. After climbing down a couple of meters of small thin metal ladder with the fins clipped to my belt I then clipped the fins and myself onto the ladder and began the process of putting the fins on only to Immediately have one slip out of my grasp. Cursing to myself me and my buddy descended with me pulling my way down the ladder to the sound of my buddy laughing at the same river claiming another of my fins but luckily I was able to find the fin stuck in the mud below me

Ive seen me doing the "Crawling on my hands and knees out of the water" routine many times as well. The latest was when I was diving in a 7 knot current and we had to swim against the current and make it to a small point jutting out or get swept into a small inland loch and have to do an extremely long surface swim. This would not normally be too bad except it was my first time diving on a full face mask and I was also on a twin hose so I hadn't quite quite worked out the optimal set-up which meant it was a bit like sucking eggs through a straw trying to breathe from it I recall me and my buddy held hands and basically both finned as hard as we could and just managed to make it onto a sand bank by the shore then did the whole crawling through the water routine. Upon hitting dry land I remember grabbing my mask and pretty much ripping it off my face and taking huge gulps of air then shoving my face back into the water since without the water on my face to keep it cool I had turned pretty much bright red As with most of those situations I can recall much laughter from the rest of the group watching me.

 

[jar546]

I was right there with you up until the part where you had to swim against a 7 knot current. Typo?



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[PatW]

Shore dives can be tricky. Now why is that? Well, think about it. We have a tank on our back and weights on our torso. That raises and changes our center of gravity. Having a different center of gravity makes keeping one's balance tricky.

My wife and I attempted a shore dive on a slightly steep sandy beach with some chop (about 4' surf) in waist deep water. In bathing suits, it would have been a snap. It just was not feasible for my wife in those conditions. By the way, my wife is a superb diver. I am stronger, larger and a better swimmer than she is but she is a far better diver. I could make do it in those conditions but not her. As it turned out, we would not have missed anything. At that site, with that chop, the visibility would have been poor anyway.

There was another shore dive we did. This one had very little chop. It had about 30' of shallow water with an uneven rocky bottom covered with slippery algae. Fortunately, I had learned a little from previous experience. In this case, I just toted the gear out past the rocky bottom to the sandy bottom in about 4' of water. I just dumped it there and kept shuttling gear until it was all out. It just did not seem to be prudent to suit up and walk over an uneven, ultraslick substrate with weight on our backs. We might have been able to do it. But then again, a fall and possible injury was a distinct possibility. The possibility was eliminated by just thinking the situation through.

The situation is that shore dives look easy but often they are far more challenging than one would expect. Unless a shore dive is ridiculously easy, it is probably best to think it through.