Have you ever done anything on a dive that you KNEW you weren't supposed to?

[Kevrumbo]

Ever? Yes, some of my own transgressions have been mentioned by others in this thread, Kev R. most recently. My diving experiences have taught me that I’m impulsive and take shortcuts. Have I learned to allow for that with planning and monitoring? Not always. For example, today, diving the Yukon in San Diego . . .

I offered to pair up with another single on the boat, a really really big guy with fifty dives and an HP 120. He was honest and accurate about his time at depth, and turned out to be not at all out of his element, although our dives were all one half hour (90 to 100 fsw max).

Viz was excellent, 45 feet lateral at depth, better than I’ve seen in my occasional forays down to San Diego over the last ten years. Have dived the Yukon since she fell. Light was great, too, and surge almost a non-issue. Wonderful conditions.

So the dive was going well, and I decided to do a short light-to-light swim-through. Nothing I haven’t done before on her. But my buddy decided to follow me. I knew at once that I had set a bad precedent. We hadn’t discussed penetration before the dive when comparing gear, training, signals, emergency options, etc.

Things worked out okay. Buddy good at cruising slow through moderate passages. But I’d guess he would not have penetrated without my example.

Buddy see, buddy do?

Something for me to keep in mind next time.

Oh yes. . . ! When the viz and ambient light conditions at depth are good coming thru the cutouts on HMCS Yukon, you can traverse the entire ship internally just by following the "skylight" illumination trail without the need of a penetration line reel --which why this dive can be so deceptively treacherous !!!

 

[Bennylab]

My wife and I did our open water cert dives in a quarry. Our first ocean dives were a trip to Key Largo with a group from the LDS. The first dive day was 3 dives on the Duane, Bibb, and Speigel - all advanced deep dives. The first dive was to 100 feet. We had a third buddy who supposedly had lots of diving experience and was training to be a DM. He assured us that he would be watching over us, and he had a pony bottle in case of emergency.

It didn't hit home how dangerous these dives were until later in the week. Our trusted dive "leader" turned out to be a horrible buddy. If we wanted to stay close to him it was up to us, because he never bothered looking to see where we were. He also struggled with gas switching to his pony bottle, which didn't leave me confident that he would have been able to share it with us on those first dives. My wife had a problem with coughing/choking on a shallow dive and didn't know what to do, so she shot to the surface. Had that happened on those first deep dives she would have been in real trouble.

I have reflected back on that first day often. Given the excitement of our first open water dives, the dangers of what we were about to do never crossed my mind. Overconfidence played a big role - in my abilities, in our "experienced leader", and the others in our group who knew these were our first real dives. We allowed others to make decisions for us on what we were capable of diving, and we had never even dove with these people.

I now know that I am solely responsible for my own safety. I have done deep dives since then, but I am better equipped and better trained. Overconfidence can still be an issue for me, but I'm aware of it and give myself a reality check before trying something new.

 

[chrispete]

My biggest transgression I won't go into but I can only say that looking back I'm glad that I survived that period in my diving.

My second biggest transgression: I had a three year gap between my intro and full cave certs. After my intro cert I started to get "experience creep". At first I was good and stayed with the gold line and 1/6th's. Then I started diving 1/3'ds, then I started doing jumps, then I started carrying a deco bottle, then moved on to circuits, then I carried a stage in. Finally some buddies sat me down and said, "You're a solid cave diver but we won't dive with you again until you get your full cave cert. There's too much liability for us and you don't want to be the 'idiot intro diver who died while going beyond your certification.' You've got the skills and experience, you just need to take the class and make it formal." This was a wakeup call for me so I set up my full cave class and thoroughly enjoyed it.

What was going though my head? It all happened so slowly that I think I justified it to myself as a natural progression of my abilities:
- "Well, the 1/6ths rule is there so that I don't go too far into the cave. I've been in this cave X many times and have been comfortable - I'll do 1/3's this time and turn early."
- "Well, it's only a 3 foot jump and I'm familiar with this part of the main tunnel, we're going to tie in to a directional marker, and I'm following a more experienced diver."
- "Well, I want to be prepared just in case I get close on deco."
- "Well, it's just a simple circuit with no branches coming off of it, I know how to use cookies properly."
- "Well, I'll just carry this stage for practice."

That path turned into diving 1/3'rds as a norm, much longer jumps into ever smaller tunnels, deco as a normal thing, planning more complex dives, and using the stage to extend my range. When my full cave instructor asked if I'd exceeded my training I came clean and we chatted about it.

Looking back on everything I took it as a big wake up call and don't intend to ever put myself or my buddies in that kind of position again.

 

[drbill]

Never (but of course that's one reason I dive solo... no one can see!).

 

[eponym]

My biggest transgression I won't go into but I can only say that looking back I'm glad that I survived that period in my diving.

My second biggest transgression: I had a three year gap between my intro and full cave certs. After my intro cert I started to get "experience creep". At first I was good and stayed with the gold line and 1/6th's. Then I started diving 1/3'ds, then I started doing jumps, then I started carrying a deco bottle, then moved on to circuits, then I carried a stage in. Finally some buddies sat me down and said, "You're a solid cave diver but we won't dive with you again until you get your full cave cert. There's too much liability for us and you don't want to be the 'idiot intro diver who died while going beyond your certification.' You've got the skills and experience, you just need to take the class and make it formal." This was a wakeup call for me so I set up my full cave class and thoroughly enjoyed it.

What was going though my head? It all happened so slowly that I think I justified it to myself as a natural progression of my abilities:
- "Well, the 1/6ths rule is there so that I don't go too far into the cave. I've been in this cave X many times and have been comfortable - I'll do 1/3's this time and turn early."
- "Well, it's only a 3 foot jump and I'm familiar with this part of the main tunnel, we're going to tie in to a directional marker, and I'm following a more experienced diver."
- "Well, I want to be prepared just in case I get close on deco."
- "Well, it's just a simple circuit with no branches coming off of it, I know how to use cookies properly."
- "Well, I'll just carry this stage for practice."

That path turned into diving 1/3'rds as a norm, much longer jumps into ever smaller tunnels, deco as a normal thing, planning more complex dives, and using the stage to extend my range. When my full cave instructor asked if I'd exceeded my training I came clean and we chatted about it.

Looking back on everything I took it as a big wake up call and don't intend to ever put myself or my buddies in that kind of position again.

I'm stealing this for use in training. This is a great, great post, thanks.

 

[dmcutter]

Mine are relatively minor. We went to Aruba and I did my first saltwater (real open water, too) dives. The first one they told us we would be going to 90-100 ft, depending on viz, and I had all of about 15 dives. I mentioned that I didn't think I should be going deeper than 60 ft and the DM said don't worry about it so I didn't. 100 ft didn't feel any different than 30 or 60, everything went great. The next day we did some swimthroughs in airplanes at 60 to 80 ft. I knew I wasn't supposed to do overhead, but I just followed everyone else. No big deal. I did start that dive with a pretty low pressure in my tank so when I came out of the second plane I was down to 800 psi so I left my instabuddy and headed for the surface solo. I did my safety stop and surfaced by myself a couple hundred yards from the boat. Long swim in the swells with no snorkle. And one night at the quarry last summer with one of my regular buddies, he started to cramp and I lost him while swimming the wall. It was a great night and you can't really find more benign conditions than that quarry, so I finished swimming the wall by myself, maybe another 20 minutes. Since solo diving is strictly verboten in our quarry, I was mostly concerned with the quarry manager showing up and finding me swimming solo. I had a light and a back up and unobstructed access to the surface, so I didn't have any safety concerns. In the first two instances my rationale was that it must be okay because the DM told me it was. I felt pleased that I had been conscious of my air supply and surfaced safely, although I was very worried that they would be pissed off at me for leaving my buddy and the group. Third instance, I felt like there wasn't really anything that could go wrong and I felt perfectly safe. I probably wouldn't do that again, though, if only for fear of being banned from the quarry.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

My transgression was several years ago. We were doing a week and a half diving and fishing trip. We were over 100 miles offshore in the Gulf of Mexico and things were terribly slow with trolling, catching like one barracuda every 2-3 hours. I t was an area we were not familiar with. I kept checking the depth…. 40 always 40; hour after hour.

Finally after a day or two, the capt says he has a number in the depth of 40 and we decide to do a dive: single 80 and a small pony bottle. We dropped anchor and headed down the anchor line in incredible vis (over 100 ft) and very warm. We got down a ways and looked over and there was a whole steel freighter. We didn’t even know if we were gonna be diving a reef or a wreck.
I saw a large grouper and took off for the bottom and shot it. I was pretty messed up, but got off the bottom and we were outta there fast. An incredible dive with 60 lb cubera snappers schooling all over the place. I kinda broke one of my own rules for depth that day..



Did I mention the depth recorder was set to read fathoms?

 

[Griffo]

Did I mention the depth recorder was set to read fathoms?

Wow. I had to google what a fathom was. The scuba police would be sure to lock you up for that! (i'm assuming air too right?)

 

[Madacub]

FWIT, I agree with lamont post #s 53 and 57.

TS&M: I'm curious, do you think the posts are going as you intended? I'm not sure what you intended, but I guess it was some sort of compilation of cautionary tales (?). Who is your intended audience?

 

[DeerCreekers]

My 15 year old son and I lobster hunt in the cold waters in California. We usually hunt farther out in the open waters but when viz and conditions are good, we sometimes hunt in the long (4 to 7 feet) grass close to shore (picture surf zone and viz that can change in an instant) at a depth of maybe 12-18 feet. There is a real danger of getting tangled so when we do this, we have (are supposed to have) designated a hunter and a safety diver. So basically u drop down and move slowly at the bottom of the grass, if u turn about the grass with tie u in knots and can (has) ripped the reg out of my mouth).
He and I are very experienced at doing this so with experience comes complacency. Several months ago I was the hunter and he was the safety diver...I saw early in the dive that he was starting to hunt and was not staying close to me. I saw this and did nothing. Several times it went through my mind we were not working like we should and the "greed" , competition and fun of lobster diving made me continue doing something at the time I felt was unsafe (in my ,ind I was thinking 20 feet of viz even in surf zone, 15 feet depth, it will be ok). Then he disappeared. 1 minute went by, I look for him...2 minutes tick by....I've surfaced and I'm trying to wait for him to surface but all I can think of is how long he has under there if he's not on his regulator and I start to feel I'm wasting time on the surface when I should be looking for him. I alternate between surfacing and going through the grass formabout the next 4 minutes...I'd have to guess it was 6-7 minutes of panic. Evutually he pops up 45 feet way from me " Mom, where the He'll were u?". He was doing the same type of thing I was doing, surfacing and then dropping back down and I guess we were just missing each other. The difference was he was slightly annoyed at me, I was an emotional mess at that point. I was crying, hyperventilating...couldn't decide if I wanted to hug him or drown him. I was mad at him, more mad at myself.
The worse part was that I knew better and felt the unease of what we were doing at the time. Those 8 minutes were without a doubly the worst 8 minutes of my life. I kept thinking I just traded my sons life for a #¥% lobster, what am I going to tell his father and brother, how could I have let this happen???
The moral of the story is that 8 minutes was a gift. I will forever dive/hunt differently now. Nothing is worth my sons life, certainly not a bug, or a cool dive experience.
It took me several months to come clean to my husband about what happened, and I think I watered down what it was like.
Safe diving