- Messages
- 96,886
- Reaction score
- 97,714
- Location
- On the Fun Side of Trump's Wall
- # of dives
- 2500 - 4999
... on the second dive of the day. We were planning to dive Milepost 8 in the Tacoma Narrows, when Cap'n Rick noticed that there was no work going on with the new Narrows Bridge ... so we decided to drop down on the remains of Gallopin' Gertie and do a lazy drift. If the current did as predicted, we'd drift it both ways ... which is pretty much what happened.
About 12 minutes into the dive Cheng and I were down to about 55 fsw when I reached for my camera to take a picture ... and it wasn't there. I wear it on a wrist lanyard, which is usually pretty secure, and just let it dangle when I'm not taking pictures. Now the current wasn't real bad ... in fact, it was pretty good for the Narrows ... but we were still drifting along at about a half-knot or so. So I signaled for Cheng to turn around and kick back the way we came ... frankly, I didn't hold out a hope in hell of finding the thing.
Funny ... the things that go through your mind in a situation like that. Swearing through my reg at my own stupidity, my first thought was well ... my stint as an underwater photographer sure was short-lived. If I can't manage to hang onto my toys I don't deserve them. The next was ... dammit ... I had taken some nice shots on that first dive, now I won't even get to see how they turned out. But after two or three minutes of kicking into the current, sweeping my light back and forth ... pretty much convinced I'd seen the last of that camera ... I started going through all the reviews I've read in here, thinking about what camera I was gonna buy to replace that one.
After about five minutes ... and thinking that Cheng must be getting pretty tired kicking into this current by now ... I was ready to turn it and resume the dive. It was pretty dark down there, and if I didn't shine my light right on it, I could swim right past the thing and never see it. Then I spotted a dull, gray rectangle upslope and about 20 feet away. Swimming in that direction, hoping against hope, I finally got close enough for my light to reflect back off the plastic surface of the housing. Talk about pure, dumb luck ... my camera had landed upright, with that big 2.5" LCD screen pointing in just the right direction for me to see it as I came back on a reverse course. If it had been pointed in any other direction, I'd have swam right on by and never noticed ...
Reunited with my little camera, we resumed what turned out to be a very pleasant dive. The current turned right on cue, and we drifted back in the other direction ... and after having drifted for most of a 64-minute dive, we surfaced about 20 feet from where we went down.
What a way to start off 2006 ...
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
About 12 minutes into the dive Cheng and I were down to about 55 fsw when I reached for my camera to take a picture ... and it wasn't there. I wear it on a wrist lanyard, which is usually pretty secure, and just let it dangle when I'm not taking pictures. Now the current wasn't real bad ... in fact, it was pretty good for the Narrows ... but we were still drifting along at about a half-knot or so. So I signaled for Cheng to turn around and kick back the way we came ... frankly, I didn't hold out a hope in hell of finding the thing.
Funny ... the things that go through your mind in a situation like that. Swearing through my reg at my own stupidity, my first thought was well ... my stint as an underwater photographer sure was short-lived. If I can't manage to hang onto my toys I don't deserve them. The next was ... dammit ... I had taken some nice shots on that first dive, now I won't even get to see how they turned out. But after two or three minutes of kicking into the current, sweeping my light back and forth ... pretty much convinced I'd seen the last of that camera ... I started going through all the reviews I've read in here, thinking about what camera I was gonna buy to replace that one.
After about five minutes ... and thinking that Cheng must be getting pretty tired kicking into this current by now ... I was ready to turn it and resume the dive. It was pretty dark down there, and if I didn't shine my light right on it, I could swim right past the thing and never see it. Then I spotted a dull, gray rectangle upslope and about 20 feet away. Swimming in that direction, hoping against hope, I finally got close enough for my light to reflect back off the plastic surface of the housing. Talk about pure, dumb luck ... my camera had landed upright, with that big 2.5" LCD screen pointing in just the right direction for me to see it as I came back on a reverse course. If it had been pointed in any other direction, I'd have swam right on by and never noticed ...
Reunited with my little camera, we resumed what turned out to be a very pleasant dive. The current turned right on cue, and we drifted back in the other direction ... and after having drifted for most of a 64-minute dive, we surfaced about 20 feet from where we went down.
What a way to start off 2006 ...
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
