Embarrassing and/or clever diving stories.

[4sak3n]

Please do share yours!

My latest moment occurred today.

We were doing an extremely shallow dive today at a site called Long Beach. Max depth is about 6m ( ~ 20 feet). Get out into the water, deflate my BCD, exhale and ...

...

...

nothing happens. So I duck-dive down to about 4m wondering what is going on. I haven't had to duck-dive for 50 or 60 dives now. As soon as I get to the bottom I immediately notice that I am positive ... VERY positive. Now I am very confused because I haven't changed my setup since the dive at the exact same site last week and I was fine then.

I start going through a mental checklist, all the while furiously finning to stay down. Haven't changed wetsuit ... haven't changed booties ... haven't changed weightbelt ...

...

...

WHERE THE ^%#@ IS MY WEIGHTBELT?!?!?

Nooblet me had just attempted to dive missing my customary 5kg (~ 11 lbs) weightbelt.

But wait ... I managed to redeem myself!

After spending a miserable 3 or 4 minutes down there I surfaced. My friend surfaces with me and asks what is wrong. After seeing his reaction I decide that there is NO WAY that I am descending again to explain to the others why I was going back to the car.

Luckily by that time I had hatched a cunning plan. If I couldn't gain any more negative buoyancy I would instead lose some positive buoyancy! I was wearing a 2 piece wetsuit (Farmer John with long sleeves and a tunic over that type style) so I removed my tunic. Only problem was that I couldn't leave it floating there 50m from shore and I was not taking it back, that would have taken far too long.

So I grabbed my spool, tied my tunic off to it and descended again, trailing my new neoprene dive float!

Because I had 3kgs in the form of my SS BP and was diving with a LOT of air (3300 litres or ~ 116 cft) I was only slightly positive after shedding the extra buoyancy of my tunic. The positive buoyancy was slight enough not to be uncomfortable.

And thus I completed my dive. Our group had 3 floats that dive, 2 standard ones and one not-so-standard neoprene one.

After I got out the water I couldn't stop ing about the fact that I had dived with 5kgs less than normal with very little problems.

So yeah ... very embarrassing but you can bet that I'm not forgetting my weightbelt again.

P.S. The water was 14 degrees C (~ 57 F) so my head got a bit chilly without it's hood. I was willing to go without it because I knew it was going to be a short dive.

 

[marcienko]

I was doing beach dive in my standard setup with 7mm wetsuit and hood. Water temp was around 60 F. So long story short .Once entering the water I had notice that water was much colder than last time ( I usually dive the same spot at least twice a week) .After few minutes I got to my favorite spot and I’m starting to take pictures. Since I’m not moving much and can spend 30 or 40 minutes at one spot I tend to get little cold at the end of each dive. :monkeydan At this time I notice getting cold unusually quick within 10 of 15 minutes of starting the dive. I decided to cut my dive shot since at this point I was really getting cold.
When I got to the shore and removed my BC I had notice that I did not zip my wetsuit. I had recall getting phone call and putting my wetsuit talking on the phone.:smash:

Lesson leaned do not put you scuba gear and talk on the phone at the same time!!!!!!

Regards

 

[Dsix36]

2 of my buddies and my self arrived at the dive site for a nice long 2 hr beach dive. We were getting our gear set up when I noticed that my tank only had 500 psi in it. I had analzed the nitrox mix when I picked it up but never checked the pressure. They had not filled it yet. I felt like a complete idiot.

We did the dive anyway. They both had 7' hoses from a cavern class. I breathed off buddy 1 for the first hour and then off of buddy 2 for the second hr. I then used my own 500 psi for the return swim. We were all using 120's and the dive worked out ok after all.

I still felt stupid, but it has never happened again.

 

[TSandM]

One night, when we had guests from California with us, we went to a site to do a night dive. We geared up at the cars, and walked about 500 yards or so to climb over the retaining wall and walk down to the water. Now, we have a rigid routine of doing a HEAD to TOE equipment check before diving, and I led it, and everything was checked and good to go. So we surface swam another hundred yards or so out to the end of the pier to the drop site. I wondered why it was so difficult to do the surface swim -- I couldn't seem to keep my fins in the water.

When we went to drop, I found out why. Somehow, in gearing up, walking, and doing the equipment check, I had managed to miss the fact that my 16 lb weight belt was still in my car. So I left my teammates floating in the ice water, and I swam back, climbed up the slope, sat on the seawall and got out of my gear, walked to the car, got the weight belt, walked back, sat on the sea wall, and tried to get into my gear and got stuck in my harness. Of course, no one was nearby to help, and I was frantic because my buddies had been waiting for me all this time.

Eventually, I managed to force my arm through, finish fastening everything, and do the surface swim to my team. They were kind about it. They're nice guys

 

[tstormdiver]

I had the weight belt (or in my case harness) thing happen:lookaround:. To make matters worse, I was doing my Dive Control Specialist internship & was supposed to be prepared (hmmmmm..... one bad mark there). I emptied my BC &,..... nothing. "What's up here?":w-t-f:, I thought to myself. I then remembered that some other divers that set up in the same area & had probably moved my harness, so I didn't see it & didn't put it on. With my drysuit & my own "natural buoyancy", there was no hope of me getting down. So,.... out of the water I go to get it, take my BC off to put it on under, put BC back on & back into the water. After the session, the instructor asked where I had gone & I had t explain. Both he & the class got a good chuckle out of it. Well,... at least I was of some entertainment value to them, if not doing my job as a Dive Con intern. I guess the instructor had been there before himself, because he was kind enough not to dock me too hard for the mishap.

 

[JahJahwarrior]

I forgot my weight belt once....filled my BC pockets with rocks and dove with half my wetsuit. Froze. Never forgotten my weight belt again....

But of course, after mybuddy joshed me about forgetting mine.....we were 30 minutes from his house when "Oh, JahJah, we gotta go back!" "why?" "I forgot my backplate and wing!" And I kid you not, we had just gotten to about that same point after driving back to get his BP/w, when he announced he also forgot his weight belt. Luckily, he has a steel plate and with a steel tank, he did ok but was a little light near the end. Funny thing is, he stopped joking about the time i forgot my weight belt, after that trip

 

[wreckchick]

I have to tell someone else's story here... A couple guys I know were working on their divemaster mapping project and took one of the guy's boat out to the site they had selected. The went to set up their gear and one guy had left his entire gear bag in the trunk of his car!

How you forget everything, I have no idea.

Rachel

 

[Doc]

Clever?
We tied off to the mooring ball which seemed to be tugging rather a lot more than it should.

As we descend, we were treated to Roatan's newest wreck. A 40' cabin cruiser had snagged the ball the night before, the drive shaft went off kilter and holed the hull. Instant wreck dive.

Apparently the clumsy sailors got to the nearby shore but left dinner on the table below decks.

Embarrassing?
I didn't notice the 45' momma Whale Shark because I was staring at the 8' baby. I thought everyone pointing at Mom were just warning me not to hit my head on "that dive boat" behind me. D'oh!:doh:

 

[Garrobo]

The ONE time that I didn't check to see how solidly my tank was strapped on (when done by a DM) the tank slipped down and almost out of the straps. I wasn't particularly embarrased and other divers got the tank back up where it should be and tightened but I surely gave the DM some hard looks when we got back on the boat. When I was doing my second day of the pool stuff I forgot to put on the weight belt and had a heck of a time staying on the bottom. That was a little embarrassing when I figured it out.

 

[Rick Inman]

I've never done anything embarrassing. However, I did discover that a drysuit does not function as well in 35 degree water unless you actually zip it closed.