How Long Have You Waited on The Surface?

[String]

So far, I've been lucky. Whenever I surface, boat is on my sight. Sometimes I swim closer to the boat before surfacing, far enough from the propeller. Eventhough there are times when I wait, that's because the boat is picking up another divers, so it's a relaxing waiting.



Divers need a toilet? Ah, you men the BIG one.

No, but in this country everyone dives in dry suits......

 

[Gombessa]

A mylar inflatable balloon was marketed some years ago.

Sounds interesting (did this product end up as an "orange shovel" item?). I can't help but feel that a self-contained mylar balloon+HE canister+LED would be a pretty nifty security blanket, if it was small enough be stowed in a BCD pocket.

I'm sure there are many reasons why it would be useless in practicality, but they gotta make money off us newbies somehow, right?

 

[drbill]

I rarely experience long waits at the surface. The ones that have slightly unnerved me were in the vicinity of the sea lion hauling area where the GWS's feed.

I did have a very long wait when I was diving southern Thailand with my Dutch dive buddy Dieke. I think we were at one of the Bidah's. We did a long dive and surfaced to find there was no dive boat in sight. It turned out we had gone all the way around the small island and surfaced on the other side. It was a while before the boat realized where we were, but bobbing at the surface looking at Dieke's beautiful smile and laughing with her was no problem... no problem at all. In fact, I wish the damned dive boat had left us stranded there!

 

[DiverLS]

The longest I had was at the Galapagos Islands. We were diving off a panga and surfaced on the other side of the island. We were wearing transducers and an extendable flag. My buddy was the Dive Master and we always had the max bottom time on our panga. We were there about 40 minutes and I got real nervous, wanted to enable the transducer or pop up the flag but the Dive Master laughing at and with me put me in check. We were the last ones back to the boat. I had a wonderful time

 

[bubba105]

Did a night drift dive in Cancun a few years back, with Aqua World, major league cattle boat. The bride and I, along with another couple, were the only ones with more than 10 dives so we got our own DM for our small group. They off loaded this mass of humanity first, which I didn't understand since we were going to have longer bottom time, let us go first. I appreciated not being a part of this mess. They brought us down current and let us go. The current was ripping and we were in 30 feet of water for 80 minutes. When we surfaced the boat was a tiny speck of light on the horizon. The beach was closer, probably two miles. I blew up my SMB, as did the DM, used my little light to illuminate the SMB and began to signal the boat with the big 8-D battery light they had lent us for the dive. It took a while before the boat looked any bigger. Nobody got nervous, at least outwardly, I think because the lights of Cancun are very bright and we would have been able to swim. When the boat got to us, probable half an hour later, there was a party going on and half the people were in the bag.

 

[Cacia]

oooohh, great tales.

We did have a surface marker, of course. I would go without my bcd first.

waived it as high as we could as we came up to the high part of the swell

lol, I was shreiking "get that sausage up there" because we could barely see the boat on the crest of the swell.

yes, no gas gauge, actually. You lift the seat and try and catch the glimmer of the sun on the surface of the fuel. It just made me think about the boat more....

Once, a friend of mine got left on a NIGHT drift because the boat started to sink (stuffing around the shaft?) and the captain had to go in and fix it first.

 

[waynel]

I don't want to hijak the thread, but how many of you DO carry a SMB? On my only drift dive day, the DM was the only one who had one. I could see it coming in REAL handy if you ended up separated.
Thanks
tim

Not only do I always carry a 6 ft. orange SMB but also a storm whistle and mirror. It all fits in my BC pocket. The SMB isn't fancy but (God forbid) if I ever need it, the SMB and it's other "friends" could save my life. I consider that safety kit the same as the seat belt in my car. I don't dive without it.

 

[Loneranger]

Boarded a charter in Pompano Beach over ten years ago. Boat was a 40' cat packed full, at least 20 divers. Just before we were about to head out a nasty front rolled in with vicious lighting. I do not care about rough seas but this storm involved some of the harshest lighting I have ever seen outdoors. The captain advised to wait 10-15 minutes while it blew over. Any rational person would have canceled but you could see the dollar signs causing this guy to play down the conditions. Headed out shortly after, the worst had jpassed but random patches of the storm we still rolling thru. Surface conditions ranged from 6-7' with some bigger stuff mixed in. Most people were lobstering so everyone hit and started to fan out. When I surfaced it was hard to spot the boat between the swells. Due to the current there were divers all over the place. I can not remember SMG's being common gear at that time. I floated for about 35-40 minutes and ended being one of the last to be picked up.

 

[miketsp]

Did a fairly long wait a couple of weeks ago on a night dive in Coz. It ended up being a much faster drift than we anticipated and the large group of 10 ended up broken down into 2 groups of 4 and 1 of 2. When we finally surfaced the boat was nowhere to be seen so we started flashing the sequence the boat had told us when we went in.
Over the next 30 minutes about 10 boats pulled up and checked us out and as soon as they realized we were not the ones they were looking for zipped off to the next floating group of divers.
Our boat finally appeared - no sweat but by the looks of things all of the boats lost their groups.

 

[Thalassamania]

Sounds interesting (did this product end up as an "orange shovel" item?). I can't help but feel that a self-contained mylar balloon+HE canister+LED would be a pretty nifty security blanket, if it was small enough be stowed in a BCD pocket.

I'm sure there are many reasons why it would be useless in practicality, but they gotta make money off us newbies somehow, right?

I may still have one in the infamous garage. The maufacturer gave us four to test, that must have been back in the mid 1980s we actually blew on whilst out to sea to check out how well it showed up on the ship's radar, did real good, we could pick it up at about 3 miles. If I find one, it's yours (I suspect you'll need a new helium cartridge).