Peaceful moments

[CBulla]

Soo... I've been trying to get the time to post this all week and here I am at it at nearly 11pm mid-week...

This past Saturday I was out with the shop helping with some of the outlaying basics supporting a class that was present (marking the platform with a float ball, helping guide wayward students back to the platform while the instructor did drills with others students and couldn't see them, etc., and when things were kind of said and it was time for OOA drills I sat down on the platform, emptied my BC and laid back to watch the show from down below.......

Now this is rare, the lake check outs are in usually has poor vis and I really didn't know what to make of this new found ability to "watch the action" without being up there with it, so I figured I'd make the most of it.

How interesting it is to have had the experience! My sense of balance was a little haywacky since I'm in a position that would have had an orangutan proud of my laid back position with a foot dangling over the edge of the platform and getting a little gentle rock motion as my buddy was practicing some drills of his own off to my right. At one point it gave me a little vertigo and even had the "hey, keep this up and you'll lose lunch!" feel. All of that went away as my senses alinged to the situation. It really helped when the nitrox students out on their 'test dives' showed up on the surface. I had movie flashbacks... visions of dive mag pictures with divers seeming to hang in nothingness at a safety stop... In fact, I got so relaxed that I did not notice the class had concluded it's drills and left to exit the lake! The minnows that showed up around the platform were more abundant than I'd ever seen them... the little bass and some other fish unknown to me appeard to be oblivious to my presence. I think it has to be one of the more peaceful moments I've ever had in dive gear.

I finally called the dive, retrieved the floatball and line then made my way back to the lakes edge via compass nav, though that was almost not even needed as the bottom geography was so clearly visible that nav was pretty easy without the need of a direction finder.

Anyway, thats my story and I'm sticking to it! Do you have a peaceful moment story you'd like to share?

 

[SCOOBA PHAN]

went to bonaire this past september. the second day we found a group of squid that seemed to be as interested in us as we were in them. we went back every day and found them each time. there were ten in all and usually all ten would be there. they are fasinating animals. the last day my buddies found the elusive bat fish and stopped to take about a thousand pics of it on the way to basically say goodbye to the squids. i continued on to the squid by myself and as always found them right in the same spot. i sat cross legged in 45 feet of water and admired these creatures for about 20 minutes. they would surround me, come right to my mask and look in, line up, change colors, everything to put on the best show they could for me. not just one of the best moments of my dive life, but of my entire life. i will never forget them.

 

[Snowbear]

Do you have a peaceful moment story you'd like to share?

About a year and a half ago a former friend helped me find a piece of lost gear. After finding it, we drifted back and forth over the wreck in about the most peaceful dive I've ever had. We had no real need to communicate anything and just enjoyed the drifting along and being in the water as friends and buddies. I didn't want the dive to end and was bummed that it had to.
I've hated even more that the friendship ended :frown:

 

[Divingnthedark]

On a liveaboard in the middle of the ocean far from any city lights, crescent moon, lights off on sailboat, not a whisper of a breeze, water flat as a mirror, me and my bestfriend sitting motionless on the deck, all others fast asleep, at 4:00 in the morning...surrounded by stars....stars reflecting off the water....unable to tell where the horizon is....where the stars end and the water begins....stars without end...lost in a moment stretching to infinity....time without end....precious memory no picture needed...

 

[Divingnthedark]

Small swim thru with window to the open blue, neutrally bouyant, becoming mesmerized by the blue, water world... one world...sun light streams down...feeling small....feeling humble...slow return to the open...turtles and fish eatting and mating, soft corals waving in the current....everything carrying on without a thought to the intruder in their midst....a connectedness and a oneness...take divemasters slate and scribble, "How Lucky we are" Divemaster scribbles back "Yes, you are right".

 

[Rick Inman]

Last December on a Saturday morning. It is so quiet and still than I can hear someone shoveling last night's fresh snow far across the lake. The water is glass and I am slowly swimming out on my back. I can see the bottom 20' below through the gin clear water.

Everyone is inside keeping warm, and I can smell the pine burning in their fireplaces. And then it begins to snow, light at first, then heavy, with quarter-sized flakes drifting slowly down onto the surface, turning clear, and then melting into the lake. It's so beautiful all around me, the hills blanketed white, the pine boughs heavy with last night new snow.

In a few days it will be Christmas.

 

[NJScubaDoc]

3rd OW Checkout Dive in the back bay of a SW River...bout 18 or so feet....viz was an astounding 20ft. Finished some drills and was taking tour with AI....rest of class was buzzing through water...I must've sat and watched the gentle incurrent and excurrent siphons of a buried clam for about 10 minutes....then a hermit crab came walking along and started nibbling on some piece of organic debris.....nothing but the bubbles....very relaxing....very peaceful.

 

[Trinigordo]

Every time I go under, nothing but me, this new world and the sound of bubbles. The sense of urgency in life gone, no gravity holding me back now. This is my moment and I am the king of the worl.......... Holy sheeeit, did you see the size of that free swimming eel?

Always something new when diving, even when it isn't new for the first time.

Gordo

 

[Hammerhead]

Blue hole, Palau.

Drop in through the coral hole into a majestic cathedral hall with light shafts breaking through above and patterning the sand below. Swimming between the shafts of light to exit unhappily at 40-odd meters on a sandy bottom, only to have my buddy signal me to ascend into the very middle of a massive barracuda 'tornado' that stayed circling around us for the next 15 minutes. Best safety stop you could hope for...

 

[MerMare]

The day was cold, rainy and gray. Floating on the surface, I could barely see my fins below me in the murky green sea. We began to descend and at about fifteen feet, the water cleared to welcome us with incredible visibility. The ocean floor slanted gently away and the darker water above us seemed like a soft green roof. The dive was slow, blue, mystical. Surfacing back into the cold and gray was a reminder of how the beauty and color of the ocean are always just a few breaths away.