Minimum gas, underwater climbing and drifting away ...

[dbulmer]

Thanks
Extremely means bloody in this context

 

[Lenaxia]

Thanks for the write up dbulmer, just one more thing to add to the list of things that I should keep in mind as my training progresses! Glad you all made it back safely.

I went out and got a McMurdo Dive canister with a Marine Radio/GPS right after reading about that group that got caught in a current and wound up on some uninhabited fighting off Komodo dragons all night. I don't dive without it

This sounds like yet another interesting story, do you have a link to it?

 

[DandyDon]

This sounds like yet another interesting story, do you have a link to it?

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/accidents-incidents/237161-missing-divers-komodo-national-park.html

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ne...9-lost-divers-fight-dragon-before-rescue.html

 

[alan_lee]

Nice write up, thanks for sharing. Did you consider swimming away from the wall to get out of the current?

Hi everyone! I'm the Alan who was diving in the group, and the thing was, when the currents went nuts, we were nowhere near the wall. We were drifitng ("flying" wouldn't be an inappropriate word) along the undulating bottom. Well.. actually, the world is actually a series of large cuscades, where it's a large flat bottom, followed by a drop, then flattens out, and so forth. With the currents sucking us down at that time, we needed to hang on to the bottom and not be sucked down further. The scary thing was, we couldn't see how far the wall went down to, and the final straw was when our team mate got sucked down past 60m.

 

[TSandM]

Wow -- scary story! I remember getting caught in a downcurrent in Bunaken, but it was mild -- I hit a couple of upcurrents that weren't, though. High current drifts on sheer walls are not for the faint of heart!

We do dive after dive after uneventful dive, and sometimes you wonder if the rest of the world is right, and all your checks and calculations are simply overkill. But it only takes one dive like this to prove the value of being this careful; of understanding gas reserves and respecting them, and of training to react calmly and methodically to unforeseen issues.

Thank you for posting your story. Thank you for reminding me of how grateful I am for the folks who have trained me.

 

[Wingy]

Ive never experienced a lot of current at Bunaken but had a lot of problems with up and down currents in Bangka...great diving but it does keep you on your toes.