How Long Have You Waited on The Surface?

[thelawgoddess]

Oh the power of a 6' orange SMB...

we used one on our boat trip out of cozumel (to punta venido and tortugas over by the mainland). on our 2nd dive (and 2nd ever warm water dive), it took me way longer than the other two pairs to equalize, and we were swept quite a ways along in what seemed like blazing current. when we surfaced, we saw several boats way off in the distance - too far to tell which one was ours. since i was puking my guts out (my first and thankfully last time of the trip), i was somewhat relieved that my boyfriend had brought a safety sausage. the swells were big enough that even holding it vertical didn't make it visible 100% of the time, but we figured they knew what direction we were located and would come as soon as they were done picking up the others. it was kind of a scary way to start warm water drift diving when we're so used to 99.9% of our dives being shore dives, though. i don't know how long we waited - it seemed like a painfully long time in my - um - condition ... but honestly i doubt it was even 15 minutes.

 

[mixedphat]

My longest is 15-20 minutes on a drift dive because the tender was picking up people who surfaced early and drifted into the reef.

On my last dive the dive operator we were with included a SMB (and whistle) as part of their standard hire gear which i was glad to see.