When I was left out to sea, it was the Captains fault. I did get a free boat dive my next trip so it worked out well.
It helps if the divers let the boat know you are a diver on the boat. . I don't usually socialize and my social anxiety worked against me. Captain said he didn't know I was on the boat with them.. I must have been forgettable, but was wearing a bright orange Harvey's, size XXL . Moral of the story, don't go boat diving farther than you can swim in.
Shucks man I know it could have been stressful but the way you put is just too funny "
I must have been forgettable, but was wearing a bright orange Harvey's, size XXL " - Too funny man.
Here its almost impossible to get left behind, all diving is done from inflatables so theres usually only 8 or so divers aboard, you really have to try hard to not notice one missing.
Thats not to say divers dont get lost and have to be searched for, not the same I know but it happens. Most dives here are drift dives and the skipper follows the surface marker buoy. The theory is that all the divers ascend up the bouyline and get picked up, but sometimes divers get lost or separated from the group, ascend without the line and more often than not get taken away by the current, so when they reach the surface the boat skipper cant see them in the swell as he is following the buoy. Only when everyone is up can the skipper then go looking for the divers. Usually its not an issue and its just a bit of a wait.
What happened to a group of us once was the skipper dropped us on the reef, it was a hectic launch through rough seas and we were diving shallow about 10/12 m when he experienced a single out board motor failure. He knew we would be at least 40 minutes and not wanting to risk going back through the rough surf with only one outboard and a full boat of divers he made a dash back to shore to change inflatables. It was a logical decision and under normal conditions it would have worked fine, but the problem on the day was the surf was so rough he couldn't get back out again and when we surfaced there was obviously no boat.
We floated around a bit thinking it will soon arrive, but soon enough realized we were getting back to shore on our own.
Luckily we were only about 2 kilometers off shore so we floated and just allowed the current to take us back, everyone was experienced divers so there was no issue and we all just "enjoyed the ride" as it were. The biggest issue was getting back through the surf with all our gear, but we just went with it and although we got tossed around and landed unceremoniously on the beach no one lost any gear and they sent a truck down the beach to come fetch us.
From where we surfaced to where we washed up was over 5 kilometers down the beach.