Has Your Dive Guide Ever Gotten Lost?

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Well it is not a "guide" story but sorta.

Flew to Calif (San Jose) From Florida, getting up ridiculously early. Buddy who dives out there and knows a lot of cool shore dives, picks us up at the airport. A few hours to his house, an hour to gather dive gear and a few/several? hours drive to the dive site. With the 3 hour time lag, this is a very long day. For lunch/dinner we have wine (not a lot) and peanuts.

So we get to the site late, northern Calif, don't even know where. We get to a protected area, sorta a cove with easy parking lot access. Never dove in Calif, or dealt with kelp beds. He explains we snorkel out, then go under the solid kelp bed, swim around, then head back and clear the kelp before our air runs out.

I trust him to "guide" and navigate and get us out of the kelp. Well, you guessed it, we "get lost" and run out of air in the kelp bed. Not a huge issue, but I wear my knife on the outside of my thigh (he never told me not to do that). When I ascend, I come to the surface spin around a few times to see where the hell we are and get all wrapped up in kelp. Didn't tell me not to spin at the surface either. So tangled in kelp, out of air and have to make our way out of maybe 75 yards of thick kelp matt. I am already exhausted from the travel/jet lag and now have to freedive under the kelp with scuba gear on, going like 15-20 feet each dive, popping up and then trying not to get tangled again (knife was a constant problem). Somewhat strenuous, but mostly just frustrating and incredibly slow.

Basically it sucked, there was no current, no waves, just a slow pain in the Azz. Finally cleared the kelp and had maybe 75 yrd surface swim in open water. It was well past sunset when I hit the rocks on the shore and I was puking peanuts and red wine. And of course my buddy found this amusing as hell, as did the tourists who were curious to approach the scuba divers leaving the water.

Our subsequent dives on the following days went well.
 
That's cool that we were aboard the same boat. I'm trying to remember a bad visibility dive. I've made so many dives on the SG. Were we diving with Silent World? That was my usual op. Were you on rebreathers or OC?
I think it was silent world, it would have been in 2011-ish. Everyone on board was on OC. I want to say vis was less than 20 feet or so. But that might be my ego giving me an excuse for getting lost on a ship.
 
Well it is not a "guide" story but sorta.

Flew to Calif (San Jose) From Florida, getting up ridiculously early. Buddy who dives out there and knows a lot of cool shore dives, picks us up at the airport. A few hours to his house, an hour to gather dive gear and a few/several? hours drive to the dive site. With the 3 hour time lag, this is a very long day. For lunch/dinner we have wine (not a lot) and peanuts.

So we get to the site late, northern Calif, don't even know where. We get to a protected area, sorta a cove with easy parking lot access. Never dove in Calif, or dealt with kelp beds. He explains we snorkel out, then go under the solid kelp bed, swim around, then head back and clear the kelp before our air runs out.

I trust him to "guide" and navigate and get us out of the kelp. Well, you guessed it, we "get lost" and run out of air in the kelp bed. Not a huge issue, but I wear my knife on the outside of my thigh (he never told me not to do that). When I ascend, I come to the surface spin around a few times to see where the hell we are and get all wrapped up in kelp. Didn't tell me not to spin at the surface either. So tangled in kelp, out of air and have to make our way out of maybe 75 yards of thick kelp matt. I am already exhausted from the travel/jet lag and now have to freedive under the kelp with scuba gear on, going like 15-20 feet each dive, popping up and then trying not to get tangled again (knife was a constant problem). Somewhat strenuous, but mostly just frustrating and incredibly slow.

Basically it sucked, there was no current, no waves, just a slow pain in the Azz. Finally cleared the kelp and had maybe 75 yrd surface swim in open water. It was well past sunset when I hit the rocks on the shore and I was puking peanuts and red wine. And of course my buddy found this amusing as hell, as did the tourists who were curious to approach the scuba divers leaving the water.

Our subsequent dives on the following days went well.
The kelp crawl of shame! The knife on the outside of the leg is a dead give away for the diver new to kelp.
 
Well it is not a "guide" story but sorta.

Flew to Calif (San Jose) From Florida, getting up ridiculously early. Buddy who dives out there and knows a lot of cool shore dives, picks us up at the airport. A few hours to his house, an hour to gather dive gear and a few/several? hours drive to the dive site. With the 3 hour time lag, this is a very long day. For lunch/dinner we have wine (not a lot) and peanuts.

So we get to the site late, northern Calif, don't even know where. We get to a protected area, sorta a cove with easy parking lot access. Never dove in Calif, or dealt with kelp beds. He explains we snorkel out, then go under the solid kelp bed, swim around, then head back and clear the kelp before our air runs out.

I trust him to "guide" and navigate and get us out of the kelp. Well, you guessed it, we "get lost" and run out of air in the kelp bed. Not a huge issue, but I wear my knife on the outside of my thigh (he never told me not to do that). When I ascend, I come to the surface spin around a few times to see where the hell we are and get all wrapped up in kelp. Didn't tell me not to spin at the surface either. So tangled in kelp, out of air and have to make our way out of maybe 75 yards of thick kelp matt. I am already exhausted from the travel/jet lag and now have to freedive under the kelp with scuba gear on, going like 15-20 feet each dive, popping up and then trying not to get tangled again (knife was a constant problem). Somewhat strenuous, but mostly just frustrating and incredibly slow.

Basically it sucked, there was no current, no waves, just a slow pain in the Azz. Finally cleared the kelp and had maybe 75 yrd surface swim in open water. It was well past sunset when I hit the rocks on the shore and I was puking peanuts and red wine. And of course my buddy found this amusing as hell, as did the tourists who were curious to approach the scuba divers leaving the water.

Our subsequent dives on the following days went well.

LOL, the last part of this story sounds very familiar to alot of California divers. I for one have had to do a serious kelp crawl when I misjudged my air. At Pt. Lobos, back when the kelp was really thick - a thick matt of kelp for yards and yards. It was so strenuous, I was considering giving up and yelling to my buddy (who smartly had enough air to clear the kelp) to call for help. I eventually managed.

Nowadays, unfortunately there arent alot of sites where the kelp is thick enough that you really need to crawl. Damn urchins.
 
When your dive guide goes to the surface to have a look see you can assume he or she is lost. Solution, or perhaps not, most places you are not required to follow the guide, you are welcome to get yourself lost! Is this still Florida???!!!
 
Captain “misplaced us” once for about 45 min..
We were adrift with not a boat or land in sight
 
When your dive guide goes to the surface to have a look see you can assume he or she is lost. Solution, or perhaps not, most places you are not required to follow the guide, you are welcome to get yourself lost! Is this still Florida???!!!
I have been known to do the "turtle navigation" on numerous occasions but I never let my divers see me do it. I will point out something cool and peek while they look or, in the case of there being nothing, I will signal shark and point out towards open ocean. As they search for the "shark" , I take a peek, get my bearings and am back underwater looking at them as they turn and shrug their shoulders, looking sad that they didn't see the shark.
 
Not really lost, but I had one who that day was guiding for the first time bring us into a bad current although the rest of the group leaders were signaling to him about it while hiding behind the rocks, then take us deeper into some annoying cold thermoclines. He was very careless. I signaled to him I was low on air, he continued swimming god knows where, so I had to separate and ascend on my own. I surfaced with 5 bar - safety stops in the blue make me a bit too excited. AFAIK he does not guide people anymore.
 
My 1st trip to MX cave diving.
Group trip so 6 divers and the guide (using the term guide loosely).
We were to dive Sac Actun, stage dive, pre dive brief we jump left jump right etc etc Swimming in..... this is not what we planned, long story short someone called it.
We exited in "zero" vis with 7 divers all surfacing with wtf just happened!
Had a second trip booked with the same "guide" which I cancelled out of.
On that trip there where 2 fatalities.
Think it was in 2004/2005
 
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