I had an 'incident' a couble of weeks ago.
I was diving with 2 folks that I had been with before, and because I hadn't been diving very much (ony about 4 dives in 2 months) we went to a spot all of us know well.
We were at the site at the end of slack and decided to do a dive around an islet which would lead to the tide pushing us into the direction we wanted to go. I'd done this dive many times and was most familiar with the location. We entered the water and notice some current right off the bat. Not much but it was noticable.
When we reached the furthest point at about 60 fsw we were getting pushed off the wall and into the boating channel. One of the divers was pushed upwards, I was pushed "down and away" and the diver in the middle was least affected. I'd never felt the current move in this direction! I thought a few hard kicks would get me back into position and over to the islet wall. But no such luck. This is where I made my mistake. I decided to kick a bit harder. Still no luck. Now I noticed I was breathing very hard and I know I'd have to work to slow my breathing. Remembering my training I was supposed to look for something to hold onto and rest. Ok, that was the _problem_. I was getting blown into Howe Sound which has a depth of around 600 - 800 fsw. There wasn't going to be a place to hang on and rest.
I'm still breating to hard and turn around and call the dive to the buddy behind me. My ascent was faster than I would have liked, but I was fairly stressed at this point. I did keep an eye on my computer (which wasn't entirely happy, but not maxed out on ascent rate). We'd only been 10 minutes into the dive with a max of 80 fsw.
I had never felt like this on a dive and spent a fair bit of time analyzing the situation. (My buddies were fine with my calling the dive and we re-grouped at the surface where I inflated my safety sausage to ensure boats saw us, surface swam to the bay where the current was negligible and continued the dive).
Lessons learned:
1) Stress can come on very fast.
2) If the current is too strong make sure you don't fight it and swim diagonally (I found the 'too strong' to be very hard to judge btw).
3) Even sites that you've been to many times can still hold surprises.
4) You think about odd things in time off stress. I clearly remember thinking "Yup, it really is impossible to overbreath these Atomic's. Cause I'm really trying too" :blinking:
During the SI I talked to one of my friends, who was teaching an OW class and she mentioned that there was alot of swirling caused by the incoming tide, which was unusual.
FWIW, I'm rescue certified with 60+ dives since getting my OW last October.
Bjorn
I was diving with 2 folks that I had been with before, and because I hadn't been diving very much (ony about 4 dives in 2 months) we went to a spot all of us know well.
We were at the site at the end of slack and decided to do a dive around an islet which would lead to the tide pushing us into the direction we wanted to go. I'd done this dive many times and was most familiar with the location. We entered the water and notice some current right off the bat. Not much but it was noticable.
When we reached the furthest point at about 60 fsw we were getting pushed off the wall and into the boating channel. One of the divers was pushed upwards, I was pushed "down and away" and the diver in the middle was least affected. I'd never felt the current move in this direction! I thought a few hard kicks would get me back into position and over to the islet wall. But no such luck. This is where I made my mistake. I decided to kick a bit harder. Still no luck. Now I noticed I was breathing very hard and I know I'd have to work to slow my breathing. Remembering my training I was supposed to look for something to hold onto and rest. Ok, that was the _problem_. I was getting blown into Howe Sound which has a depth of around 600 - 800 fsw. There wasn't going to be a place to hang on and rest.
I'm still breating to hard and turn around and call the dive to the buddy behind me. My ascent was faster than I would have liked, but I was fairly stressed at this point. I did keep an eye on my computer (which wasn't entirely happy, but not maxed out on ascent rate). We'd only been 10 minutes into the dive with a max of 80 fsw.
I had never felt like this on a dive and spent a fair bit of time analyzing the situation. (My buddies were fine with my calling the dive and we re-grouped at the surface where I inflated my safety sausage to ensure boats saw us, surface swam to the bay where the current was negligible and continued the dive).
Lessons learned:
1) Stress can come on very fast.
2) If the current is too strong make sure you don't fight it and swim diagonally (I found the 'too strong' to be very hard to judge btw).
3) Even sites that you've been to many times can still hold surprises.
4) You think about odd things in time off stress. I clearly remember thinking "Yup, it really is impossible to overbreath these Atomic's. Cause I'm really trying too" :blinking:
During the SI I talked to one of my friends, who was teaching an OW class and she mentioned that there was alot of swirling caused by the incoming tide, which was unusual.
FWIW, I'm rescue certified with 60+ dives since getting my OW last October.
Bjorn