It has happened a few times for me but two of them we were diving with guides we have dove with in the past and they wanted to try sites they had not explored yet. They asked us ahead of time if we were ok with exploring a new site with them and we were happy to try something new. My wife had one a couple years ago with a very new guide. The site was a wrecked plane and it would be a negative entry in current, so they dropped in and my wife hit the target but the guide and two other newer divers missed and got blown off the wreck. My wife saw what happened so she just went with the current and caught up to them the current was ripping so the called the dive and surfaced. The guides SMB would not inflate as it had a hole it it so my wife rounded up the divers into a conga line holding onto each others tank and inflated her SMB. The captain was looking for the guides SMB which was a different color than my wives so it took him a few minutes to realize what was going on. The captain was not happy with the guide and after they talked he pulled my wife aside and thanked her for the help and refunded the cost of the trip. The guide was a little embarrassed that the 50 something lady had to help him out but my wife is very experienced and has been an active DM/AI for 16 years so she down played it to him because we have all been there.
Has Your Dive Guide Ever Gotten Lost?
- Thread starter Trace Malinowski
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Ha ha yes, my dive buddy did that to me last Saturday.
I use chopsticks to mark where I find seahorses at a certain dive site. Last weekend she removed one when we were diving and I saw her using it to post things out to another buddy.
When we surfaced I told her that she had removed the marker I use and she mentioned well there was no seahorse there. Not the point, it's also a navigational marker too so I know exactly where I am when the vis gets bad.
The occasional seahorse also had an alternative place to hang on to as well.
Our dive guide in Bonaire on an ostracod night dive didn't so much as get lost as much as she just left us and swam into the night leaving me, my wife, and an elderly couple in our group behind to fend for ourselves. As we started in, the visibility got bad. Rather than tighten up the group to keep us together, the guide just kept swimming and eventually disappeared. Fortunately, I kept the group together, communicated a plan and took care of it. I had shot an azimuth to the shore before we submerged lined up with the radio towers. 20 minutes later we all ended up on shore together with not so much as a "Sorry, I lost you guys in the murk" from the guide....nada. It wasn't life and death, but my wife and the other couple were not real happy.
Gandalf-the-Diver
Contributor
OP
Thanks for your stories, all, they have been entertaining thus far.
The operation I worked for on Cayman Brac was serious about the "guide" role. My first couple weeks on the job were spent just learning the sites. Then they had me lead dives on the easy-to-navigate ones first such as wall dives and the Soviet-built Cuban frigate wreck, the M/V Capt. Keith Tibbetts. Then they trusted me to lead dives where more attention needed to be paid to pilotage or a compass might be required. We planned a couple of days each week where an experienced guide would be aboard so I could learn new sites until I was off the leash entirely. That impressed me. It takes about a month for a newly hired guide to settle into the role depending upon how many sites an operation visits. I'm glad our operation didn't just say, "Great! You have a DM or instructor card! The sea is right over there."
In the Bahamas, I was dating a woman who was an instructor. I'd spend weeks or months on the island at time. Just by going diving with the staff, I ended up earning my keep as a freebie by being voluntold to guide.
By the time I was asked if I wanted to work as a guide for an operation in Key Largo, I had a lot of experience diving there beginning as road trips in college and culminating with living in Miami with Key Largo just an hour down the road. I was working for Divers Direct and diving with a couple of operations as a freebie. I changed my work schedule to be in the store from 2 PM until 10:00 PM at night and I'd work as a guide for the two-tank morning dives. On days off, I taught my own students going out on our boat.
I never guided in North Carolina, but I taught a lot of wreck diving courses there until I shifted to the St. Lawrence River. Before I started working for a couple operations, I had a lot of experience and knew the sites quite well.
The only time I ever became lost that was entirely my fault was when we ventured down a slope off the stern of the Ash Island Barge to get 140 feet on the gauges for a tech class. When I swam back up the slope things didn't look right and the current was moving in the wrong direction. We all ended up becoming separated in the fast current and eddies. I lost a student teaching trimix trying to get to the wall to drift into the J.B. King. I told him to follow me and to swim hard to reach the wall before we hot dropped. I looked back and he was gone. He twisted his ankle when he did a stride off the boat in doubles and deco bottles. When he tried to keep up, he knew there was a problem and aborted without me seeing him.
I once got lost leading instructors and experienced divers in Dutch Springs after assuring them, I could take them exactly where they wanted to go. I failed miserably. A dive later with a cave diving buddy clued us into a problem. My compass was pointing north when we were heading south with the South Wall ahead of us. It turned out the compass had developed an oil leak and water was mixing in with the compass oil throwing it off. Solo diving in Canada one afternoon, my Shearwater's compass wasn't making any sense on my swim out to a wreck. When I calibrated it after a battery change, the digital compass left out a quadrant. I felt like Flight 19 in the Bermuda Triangle.
The operation I worked for on Cayman Brac was serious about the "guide" role. My first couple weeks on the job were spent just learning the sites. Then they had me lead dives on the easy-to-navigate ones first such as wall dives and the Soviet-built Cuban frigate wreck, the M/V Capt. Keith Tibbetts. Then they trusted me to lead dives where more attention needed to be paid to pilotage or a compass might be required. We planned a couple of days each week where an experienced guide would be aboard so I could learn new sites until I was off the leash entirely. That impressed me. It takes about a month for a newly hired guide to settle into the role depending upon how many sites an operation visits. I'm glad our operation didn't just say, "Great! You have a DM or instructor card! The sea is right over there."
In the Bahamas, I was dating a woman who was an instructor. I'd spend weeks or months on the island at time. Just by going diving with the staff, I ended up earning my keep as a freebie by being voluntold to guide.
By the time I was asked if I wanted to work as a guide for an operation in Key Largo, I had a lot of experience diving there beginning as road trips in college and culminating with living in Miami with Key Largo just an hour down the road. I was working for Divers Direct and diving with a couple of operations as a freebie. I changed my work schedule to be in the store from 2 PM until 10:00 PM at night and I'd work as a guide for the two-tank morning dives. On days off, I taught my own students going out on our boat.
I never guided in North Carolina, but I taught a lot of wreck diving courses there until I shifted to the St. Lawrence River. Before I started working for a couple operations, I had a lot of experience and knew the sites quite well.
The only time I ever became lost that was entirely my fault was when we ventured down a slope off the stern of the Ash Island Barge to get 140 feet on the gauges for a tech class. When I swam back up the slope things didn't look right and the current was moving in the wrong direction. We all ended up becoming separated in the fast current and eddies. I lost a student teaching trimix trying to get to the wall to drift into the J.B. King. I told him to follow me and to swim hard to reach the wall before we hot dropped. I looked back and he was gone. He twisted his ankle when he did a stride off the boat in doubles and deco bottles. When he tried to keep up, he knew there was a problem and aborted without me seeing him.
I once got lost leading instructors and experienced divers in Dutch Springs after assuring them, I could take them exactly where they wanted to go. I failed miserably. A dive later with a cave diving buddy clued us into a problem. My compass was pointing north when we were heading south with the South Wall ahead of us. It turned out the compass had developed an oil leak and water was mixing in with the compass oil throwing it off. Solo diving in Canada one afternoon, my Shearwater's compass wasn't making any sense on my swim out to a wreck. When I calibrated it after a battery change, the digital compass left out a quadrant. I felt like Flight 19 in the Bermuda Triangle.
OP
Dody
Contributor
I was buddying in Koh Tao with an Instructor who used to be a friend. He asked me to lead the 60+ minutes dives. Upon surfacing, not boat. He started to blame me. I thought it was the right place but I am not really an experienced navigator as I almost always pay for a dive guide. So I admitted that I ****** up. This did not stop him from constantly cursing. We were along a very big mountain rock, swam around right then left, did not find the boat and after maybe 90 minutes, we waved a passing boat to help us out. They brought us back to our boat where the crew was not even looking for us as they believed that 2 experienced divers could stay shallow for over 2 hours. But the end is marvellous. The place where we entered the water was a drop off. So the boat never stays there and always moves to a small creek maybe 300 meters away. The Instructor was told and he forgot. I made him pay for his 90 minutes of abusing language. We are no longer friends today.
I dove off WPB on a drift dive with a hired guide in addition to the regular group guide on the insistence of my wife as I was solo and it had been a year since I dove that area. The briefing was to drift along the reef with the wall the the left, a break in the reef over sand, and then another reef. I felt I was ok because I had my own guide. I was wrong. We were at the back of the group when I spotted a salp and swam towards it, thinking that my guide would follow. By the time I got to the salp to point it out, everybody was lost in the distance. And by now I was over the sand part with no reference reef. I managed to find an old fishing pole, drifted some more, and then deployed my dSMB and did my safety stop. The swell detached the dSMB from my line, but it was right above me when I surfaced. I was about a half mile away from the boat, which saw me and picked me up within a few minutes. I got chewed out by the captain until I pointed out that my guide got lost. He was the last to be picked up and until he saw me waving from the boat with the big OK sign, fairly nervous. I did three more dives with him, and he was sure to be always facing me. I, on the other hand, learned to trust the drift, as we would always catch up to the group even if slower, as the main guide always hooked in near the 3/4 point to gather the divers to ascend.
miked
Contributor
Yeah, I've been with dive guides who've gotten lost due to it being their first or second time on a particular site, or if visibility suddenly changes drastically for the worse.
I was once diving with a relatively new guide, and while doing the safety stop the water suddenly change from clear to looking like milk???? We both had lots of air, so we finished the stop and I followed him in the direction he indicated to get to the boat. After a while it became clear we weren't headed in the right direction, and he surfaced, to see the boat about 75 yards away. As I said, we both had lots of air , and and there really was no danger. The boat crew singled us to wait and they came and picked us up.
Of course when it was pointed out that we did our safety stop on a mooring line at one end of the boat, and that our dive boat was moored at the far end of the same wreck , my guide certainly caught a lot of Flack. But as I said no harm no foul.
I've also had guides tell me they're going to do “turtle navigation ”, which meant when they got lost they pop up to the surface and see where they are!
I was once diving with a relatively new guide, and while doing the safety stop the water suddenly change from clear to looking like milk???? We both had lots of air, so we finished the stop and I followed him in the direction he indicated to get to the boat. After a while it became clear we weren't headed in the right direction, and he surfaced, to see the boat about 75 yards away. As I said, we both had lots of air , and and there really was no danger. The boat crew singled us to wait and they came and picked us up.
Of course when it was pointed out that we did our safety stop on a mooring line at one end of the boat, and that our dive boat was moored at the far end of the same wreck , my guide certainly caught a lot of Flack. But as I said no harm no foul.
I've also had guides tell me they're going to do “turtle navigation ”, which meant when they got lost they pop up to the surface and see where they are!
I was a fairly new diver with maybe 30+ dives over a couple of years when I was diving with an operation in Fiji. The first dive with the usual DM went just fine. For the second dive, he announced that our skipper would lead the dive, and we would do a site named "The Three Sisters." We got in the water and went down about 30 feet, with nothing in sight. He signalled for us to stay while he went back up to the boat, apparently to get directions. He came back down and pointed a direction and then took off, with our group following. We got down to about 90 feet, where we saw some small, scattered coral formations above the sand floor. Since we were diving air and this was our second dive (his first), we all got close to NDL pretty quickly. I showed him my computer with only about 2-3 minutes of NDL left, and he was clearly puzzled. I then signalled that I was going up. The rest went with me. When we got far enough up to get some more NDL, we could no longer see those small coral formations below us, so we all went up and got on the boat. We told the DM what had happened as the skipper (DM for that dive) surfaced, got on the boat, and sat scowling at us for our mutiny.
A couple days later I dived with a different operation in the area. They announced we would be doing "The Three Sisters." We got in the water and immediately found ourselves in an area with three tall coral bommies, skyscraper-like formations common that part of the Pacific. It was a great dive.
A couple days later I dived with a different operation in the area. They announced we would be doing "The Three Sisters." We got in the water and immediately found ourselves in an area with three tall coral bommies, skyscraper-like formations common that part of the Pacific. It was a great dive.
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