San Juan - Not Just Another Downwelling

[DennisW]

I remember another group of divers several years ago that had a similar experience. Several of those folks took the chamber ride.

 

[parrotheaddiver]

Jen my heart was pounding just reading your story...yikes glad everyone is ok

 

[vlkr]

sounds like several bad things happened. one good one was that it happened early in the dive and not late.

 

[robint]

Jen - glad you are ALL okay and thank you so much for posting this! I hope you post this on every scuba forum out there, too. Thank goodness no one in your group was a newbie and that your DM was close enough to the other divers to help them. This could have been sooooo ugly.

thanks again for posting!

robin

 

[JenLoves2Dive]

When you are diving San Juan (and most of the other Coz sites), the shore is to the east of you.

Yes, if you read that again you will see that I am referring to the "current". The current is heading West coming from the shore. My home is on the island facing West...I sure hope I know where the shore is. lol!!

 

[FishOutUvH2O]

Damn! :shocked2: That would appear to have been much worse than the spankin' the wife and I got up there.

Maybe we should start a club (or support group), and get t-shirts and bumper stickers made up.

P.S. Were glad you're still here as well. There's only so many people we can con into wearing a silly outfit and getting on the Carnival float. We'd hate to lose one.

 

[deeper thoughts]

I am glad you are ok, scary!!!

 

[jlyle]

Wow, I'm happy it all turned out for the best. One of my groups had a similar experience at Santa Rosa many years ago. It's strange to see your bubbles going down and takes a while to understand what is happening. In our case, getting away from the wall was the proper solution, akin to swimming parallel to shore to get out of a rip current. Your "river of water" must have been huge. San Juan and Barracuda are defintely advance dive sites.

 

[RubberDucky]

I know a very experienced diver who lives in Coz and I emailed her the link to this thread. She replied back with some very interesting information. I haven't asked her if I can repost her email here, so I'm going to post the Reader's Digest (condensed) version of the good parts:

Once while diving at Tormentos they had only descended to 20ft before the DM called the dive. "He could observe from the twirling of the sand and other factors, that there were several "whirlpools" that could pull us down fast."

On another trip to Barracuda and San Juan, she talks about spotting the whirlpools from the boat: "I looked out at the water and you can tell by the surface if the currents are "going to mess with you". The surface appears as usual, but then you can see all these "smooth spots", but big areas, like 50 ft. x 50 ft. and if you look all around you, you see them."

She passed up the dive, and sure enough within 15 - 20 minutes everyone had aborted. The more you know..

 

[JenLoves2Dive]

I know a very experienced diver who lives in Coz and I emailed her the link to this thread. She replied back with some very interesting information.

Once while diving at Tormentos they had only descended to 20ft before the DM called the dive. "He could observe from the twirling of the sand and other factors, that there were several "whirlpools" that could pull us down fast."

"I looked out at the water and you can tell by the surface if the currents are "going to mess with you". The surface appears as usual, but then you can see all these "smooth spots", but big areas, like 50 ft. x 50 ft. and if you look all around you, you see them."

Yes, I've certainly seen what your friend is referring to but as I had mentioned, there was no indication and everything appeared normal from the surface. Many times I have seen the swirling sand once I descended with no indication from the surface. BTW, I think it's always a good idea for the DM to tell you ahead what the audible signal is going to be, should there be a need to abort the dive.

I have definitely see this at Tormentos. We have fondly nicknamed one dive there as Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. wheeeee! (Named for a ride that used to be at Disney World.)

Maybe we should start a club (or support group), and get t-shirts and bumper stickers made up.

Great idea! How about a T-shirt that says: "Ouch! I got spanked on the North End." lol

P.S. Were glad you're still here as well. There's only so many people we can con into wearing a silly outfit and getting on the Carnival float. We'd hate to lose one.

WHAT? Who me?? Obviously I'm not the only one who got conned into wearing a skimpy grass skirt! BTW, What were YOU wearing that night??