I need moral support

[Thalassamania]

I honestly don't remember when it happened or what I was doing at the time, but there I was underwater with a mouthpiece between my teeth and no regulator, feeling rather stupid, and trying to figure out why my mouth was full of water.

 

[Steve_Dives]

I honestly don't remember when it happened or what I was doing at the time, but there I was underwater with a mouthpiece between my teeth and no regulator, feeling rather stupid, and trying to figure out why my mouth was full of water.

I've submerged on my snorkel. Spend all that time and money on the gear and then forget to use it! (At least I turned my tank on.)

 

[Hawkwood]

Okay, I'll fess up now that some of the responses have been "non-tech". My most embarrassing moment came two weeks ago during my ice diving certification. One of our excercises was to do a "rescue". At the end of a dive teams dive cycle, the dive team signals a simulated emergancy. The dive supervisor then sends out the rescue diver. The rescue diver is sent out on a bearing to a distance slightly further out than the position of the dive team. The rescue diver is to swim out on the bearing to the distance on his/her tether, and then begin a sweep so the tether intercepts the dive team to be rescued.

Well, my turn comes up as rescue diver. Everything so far worked out well over the weekend. Only had one minor free flow and I dealt with that underwater. Anyway, I'm sent out for simulated rescue. It was a fair distance out, and I had some trouble will maintaining my depth (supposed to stay a few feet below the ice for the rescue). The visibility was good enough that I could see the dive team, but as I swept toward them my inflator stuck open and before I realized I was "stuck" up against the ice. I'm "flopping" against the ice trying to find someway to vent something - can't get my shoulder or arm up any higher and couldn't really get anything out of my BCD. After a while the dive team figured out what was wrong, and came and "rescued" me. Of course my son had to be part of that dive team and I haven't lived it down since.

Of course once back at surface we had to explain to all why the dive team's tethers went to the rescuer and not the other way around!

Now I can think of all kinds of things I could have done to become neutral or negative and get myself out of my predicament - at the time no.

 

[MonkSeal]

Another one came to my mind.

DIR-F, SMB drill: I launched SMB without checking above and there was the instructor who stopped it (classical) but unfortunatly he was entagled and dragged to surface. We had nice video review that evening

 

[Clare]

I think this is great thread. Accepting that people make mistakes and learn from them permits you to make them yourself and not be too hard on yourself when you, inevitably, do.

I've made loads of course. I think the most memorable one was when my buddy was given a erroneous left post failure. Once he shut it, our instructor moved the bubbles to the right which is where I came in - and seeing bubbles still streaming out shut my buddy's right too. I did signal to him to switch regs - but forgot to turn his left post back on.

Oops. Our other team mate donated whilst we sorted it out.

When we surfaced, Jarrod asked me whether I had decided I didn't like my buddy that much Then we went back and did it again.

Have fun while you train, any self imposed stress just gets in the way.

 

[HBDiveGirl]

From the Hoist-By-One's-Own-Petard files:

I was working up a lather of worries as I presented myself for RecTriOx Recheck.
A couple of months of practice feeling more wasted by the nervous moment.

In a moment of deranged bravado, I clipped a small rubber chicken keyfob onto my left chest d-ring. Hey, I thought... this is RecTriOx! No stages, no deco bottles. Nothing on that ring but a back-up light. I'll be safely funny in order to help fight down my rising nerves.

Besides, it's small and probably no one will even notice. :14:

I was last off the steps at the Casino Point Dive park. My instructor and teammate were bobbing on the surface about 40 feet away. My teammate reported later that the instructor took one look toward me and said, "What's that on her D-ring? Is that a Chicken?"

But wait... there's more.

Our instructor said not a word to me about my non-compliant gear addition, but proceeded to hand us problem after problem. We worked, we tried, we won some, we lost some. As we were heading back toward shore, the dive feeling like it was more or less over.... (ha ha ha ... I hear you more experienced GUE students laughing already :shakehead ...).... all of a sudden it was an avalanche of crap: first stage failure, heavy kelp entanglement, failed light, OOA... just a snow storm and I decided, "Cripes! It's a daytime dive. I'm clipping off my friggen failed light because it just tangled in the kelp.. AGAIN!!"

I flipped it quickly off my left hand, and, with my left hand, did a one-handed clip-off onto my left chest D-ring. (Later on I remembered that it felt... funny.) I deployed my long hose to my OOA buddy... Who was looking slightly downwards.... right at my chest level.

His mask was flooding as he laughed uncontrollably at MY HID LIGHT HEAD, CLIPPED OFF, not to the D-ring, but TO THE RUBBER CHICKEN, WHOSE NECK IS NOW STRETCHED TO ABOUT 4 INCHES OF VERY THIN YELLOW RUBBER!

I looked down and totally busted up in laughter and raw nerves.
Our instructor was behind my shoulder, and either saw none of this, or politely pretends to have not seen it so I can hold onto some slender shred of self-respect.

We some how got a grip, deployed hoses, turned a 1st stage off and back on to reseat an O-ring, disentangled our exasperated selves from the kelp, and finally got the signal to cut the scenario. Rocket stars, we were not.

The rest was silence... and barely supressed giggles.

That dratted rubber chicken lives in my dive bag, as a constant warning to not tempt fate and instructors.... and that, barring anyone losing an eye, the wackiest stuff often makes for the greatest stories later.

I can't wait to hear your stories, Lynne!

~~~
Claudette

 

[El Orans]

My instabuddy during Fundies decided to add some excitement to the dives by inventing a drill (without telling anyone else of course... :11

He secretly removed his mask, asked for assistance, then tried to rip off my mask.

Needless to say, our instructor wasn't pleased.

 

[onfloat]

Lets see......
on one of my 1st skills dives
I'm doing an ascent drill as part of a two man team. I loose control and rocket up through another two man team doing ascent drills. Once I arrest my ascent I fall right back through the middle of the same team. fun, fun!!!:shakehead

During my tech diver class I have an OOG and end up on my team mate's long hose and then he has a right post failure and I promtly turn off my own gas supply. Oh, and Joe Talavera was able to take my deco bottle right off me at the begining of a dive and I didn't notice it was gone until the end of the dive.

 

[Dive-aholic]

I honestly don't remember when it happened or what I was doing at the time, but there I was underwater with a mouthpiece between my teeth and no regulator, feeling rather stupid, and trying to figure out why my mouth was full of water.

Same happened to me. My wife and I were swimming along. All of a sudden my wife hands me my reg. I take it and look at it, and look down and don't see a hose or reg leading to my mouth but still feel the mouthpiece. It still doesn't quite process through my mind, so I cautiously take a breath just to make sure what I think I'm seeing is actually what I'm seeing. It was! I went to my back up and replaced the mouthpiece and continued on.


A non-GUE class experience. During my full cave course, my instructor started acting like a confused diver (he denied it afterwards). He dropped his light, letting it hang from its cord and started swimming erratically (if that's not confused...). I picked up the light and tried handing it to him but he wouldn't take it. We flanked him and tried to control him on the exit, but he wasn't playing. He kept trying to get away from us. So I did what I thought would work to get him under control. I dropped my primary and started signalling OOA. He donates his primary just like I planned. But then my plan goes south. Instead of putting his bungied reg in his mouth, he grabs my bungied reg and puts it in his mouth. Unfortunately, he twists the reg around so the bungie doesn't break free of the reg (and I know this was intentional!). So there we are being blown through the Lips, face to face, me breathing off his long hose reg, him breathing off my short hose reg! :11: After about a minute of this, I gave up and gave him back his reg and he kindly gave me back mine. But the games weren't over. But that's a story for another thread.

 

[Thalassamania]

Okay Lynne, I’ll tell you a story that cost REAL bucks.

We were down at the Caribbean Marine Research Center with the Deep Rover Submersible, National Georgraphic, National Geographic Kids, the BBC, Sylvia Earle and Graham Hawks (they were still married then), C. Lavett Smith (American Museum), Jim Tyler (Smithsonian), Bruce Robison (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute), Larry Madin (Woods Hole), Joe McGinnis, and a bunch of other folks. My role was heading up the recovery crew as well as working as Pilot Instructor, and submersible crew. We had a very busy schedule what with the science we were trying to get done (including Sylvia’s planned 24 hour long dive) as well as filming for four different productions.

A short description of the sub is in order. The original Deep Rover was a one person sub based around an acrylic sphere of about 6 ft. diameter. The sphere was split in half and opened at the bottom on a hinge at the top. The two sphere halves were each mounted in an aluminum frame and the two frames seal with a large o-ring.

Work was going well, but the pace was killing, we were diving around the clock and the four us who were servicing the sub were pretty beat. Larry Madin’s first dive was early one morning, everything went fine till we put the sub in the water. Larry yelled over the coms, “There’s water everywhere!” which is not an unusual comment when someone is dunked like a tea-bag into the ocean while enclosed in a clear sphere. But Larry really meant it, by the time the sub was raised back up the water had flooded the seat base that housed most of the controls.

We got the sub back on the deck, got Larry out and it took us 30 hours of straight work (with no sleep) to completely rebuild the seat base electronics using spares that we carried. We got everything back together and Larry got back into the sub, he sat down and noticed that the foam pad from the seat was missing. He asked for it and someone passed it into him. Larry put the pad down on top of the seat and sat down. His weight squeezed sea water that was still in the pad , but not detectable when it was picked up, out. The seat base was once again flooded and shorted out. This time it only took us 18 hours to fix, using parts we cannibalized from the control systems of the ROVs we had aboard. Then we were able to successfully launch Larry for his dive.