nshon
Contributor
1st dive on the 3rd day of a 5/4 LOB and the previous night crossing was extremely rocky so I woke up feeling seasick and generally awful. Had a quick breakfast, geared up and everything just didn't feel right, the straps on the BC felt tight, the tank felt too heavy and I'm still under the weather. Decided to go ahead since I'd probably feel better once I'm in the water.
Dive requires that we drop portside, swim down the mooring line against pretty strong currents (to me anyway). The line as it turned out was running tight against across the hull of the boat.
Anyway, giant stride in and the current took me maybe 5 metres away from the line, paddled hard on my back to be handed my video camera + lights (bulky and heavy). At this point I was probably panting hard and did not know it but I gathered my thoughts, strapped the video to my wrist and decided to descent first to get away from the current. I deflated the BC and could not descent and pulled myself down under the boat on the rope whilst exhaling hard. Once under, I found myself hyperventilating, I was breathing uncontrollably and still cannot descent.
The video was flailing all over, and I cannot breathe. Okay up I go, it's about ******ing time I pulled this one. At this point I'm probably about 2-3m down at most and under the boat. As I try to get away from the hull, my buddy's fins comes crashing and knocks my reg out of my mouth. I am still short of breath, my reg is out of my mouth, I cannot get to the surface. As luck would have it I grab my reg, replace it in my mouth, still breathing hard and inflate my BC and come up where I started. At this point my buddy is already on the surface and probably notices something wrong. Fully inflating my BC, I drift to the back on the boat, shaken but alive. I pull the dive, sleep for another hour and continued the rest of the trip with no problems.
Lessons learnt
Dive requires that we drop portside, swim down the mooring line against pretty strong currents (to me anyway). The line as it turned out was running tight against across the hull of the boat.
Anyway, giant stride in and the current took me maybe 5 metres away from the line, paddled hard on my back to be handed my video camera + lights (bulky and heavy). At this point I was probably panting hard and did not know it but I gathered my thoughts, strapped the video to my wrist and decided to descent first to get away from the current. I deflated the BC and could not descent and pulled myself down under the boat on the rope whilst exhaling hard. Once under, I found myself hyperventilating, I was breathing uncontrollably and still cannot descent.
The video was flailing all over, and I cannot breathe. Okay up I go, it's about ******ing time I pulled this one. At this point I'm probably about 2-3m down at most and under the boat. As I try to get away from the hull, my buddy's fins comes crashing and knocks my reg out of my mouth. I am still short of breath, my reg is out of my mouth, I cannot get to the surface. As luck would have it I grab my reg, replace it in my mouth, still breathing hard and inflate my BC and come up where I started. At this point my buddy is already on the surface and probably notices something wrong. Fully inflating my BC, I drift to the back on the boat, shaken but alive. I pull the dive, sleep for another hour and continued the rest of the trip with no problems.
Lessons learnt
- I felt like **** and let my ego/crotcch take over and do the thinking- I should not have taken the dive but felt I would let my buddy down and went ahead with it. A weakness that could have caused my life.
- Task overload - Probably the 5th - 6th time I was diving with the video and the 2nd time with the lights as well. Given the currents I should have dived without it with lack of experience in those conditions
- Descending without buddy - In hindsight I don't see how it was possible to decend together given the current and the line running tight across the hull (I had to put my finger between the hull and rope to get a grip) but I am more wary of descending without my buddy in future.
