Currently the Eid holiday here in the UAE and some of us were very happy to get back in the water again albeit with some restrictions and but more importantly on less crowded boats.
Diving here in UAE rarely includes guides or DMs, you provide confirmation of your certification and you get on with it. Gear checks are always made before the boat leaves the marina and everyone is responsible for their own sh!t, and off we go.
The only crew member, the boat driver is rarely a diver, and in this instance, this was the case.
There were two buddy pairs (X and Y) and two threesomes, of which I was a part of with K and E, whilst the other threesome comprised of a young couple with limited diving experience and an instructor (A) that we knew.
General rule is gear up in the marina, make sure everything is fine before casting off and heading to the first dive site.
Everyone starts getting their gear together, K knows buddy pair X as they were in the same BSAC club at one point, general introductions all round with the applied social distancing on the boat etc.
Buddy pair Y now have their first issue, one of their first stages is leaking badly when their air is turned on, and we soon discover that one of the LP ports is missing the cover from the first stage. K to the rescue as she always carries some spare parts, and that issue is resolved. Made me wonder though when the reg was last used, but hey, not my problem!
Out to the first dive site, mooring in place, nice and easy 30m dive, with K, E and myself in first as we and Buddy Pair X are the only ones on Nitrox, whilst the others were on air.
K and I have stages with 80% and 50% respectively, E is on sidemount, and one of couple X has a stage with 50%.
At the end of our dive, K, E and myself complete our deco stop and upon surfacing one of Buddy Pair Y surfaces next to us apparently having done an uncontrolled ascent from an unknown depth, and he is telling us he was unable to grab the rope (mooring line) to slow down. His computer is beeping loudly and he appears to be a bit stressed. English is not his first language.
K manages to calm him down and he is asking for oxygen. Since K still has about 150 bar of 80% she offers to take him down to 5m and provide some O2 albeit 80% at that depth. His buddy is nowhere to be seen, but apparently he is coming up the line.
After only two minutes at 5m K and the panicked diver surface, with the mouthpiece from the stage regulator missing, and not swallowed fortunately, but chewed off. Anyway we get everyone onboard and he appears fine, O2 offered but declined now his buddy is back on board. I'm not expecting this guy to do the second dive.
We cruise next to the second dive site, and since the mooring has been cut off, (by fishermen we assume), we drop a shot on the site using GPS as reference. The shot is a piece of concrete almost in the shape of a curling stone with a piece of rebar loop for the rope.
Surprisingly Buddy Pair Y elect to dive again. Instructor A and our buddy E go in first with a plan to run a line from the shot should it be far from the dive site (a bunch of wrecked cars), vis is usually poor (2-3m). Everyone is instructed not to pull on the mooring line. Buddy Pair X, drop off and the what is now Buddy Pair Z also drop off, with one descending immediately and the other flaffing around to deal with a free flow on the surface, which he gets under control and eventually descends.
Now we have Buddy Pair Y, who decide to dive again and are slow at gearing up. Of course neither of them had changed their tanks during the SI, and one of them is adding extra weights to his BCD pocket whilst the other one jumps overboard because he feels seasick. The boatman throws his BCD/ Tank overboard for him to put on, which he cannot manage. K jumps overboard to assist him in getting his gear on, and then he starts shouting that his tank is empty. K checks his gauge and tells him he has 200 bar, but his computer is not registering. I notice that his computer is on a lanyard attached to his wrist and not strapped to his wrist, it looked like an Aladin Air, but I can't confirm. Now while I've seen people tie off computers to D rings I've never seen anyone have one dangling from their wrist, which is just asking for trouble like banging it off a boat ladder whilst climbing up, or even losing it.
His buddy then proceeds to off board and swim to the shot line while I gear up and roll off. K has her gear passed to her and she is ready to go in a couple of minutes.
By now we're not sure what is going on with the pair of them, but I do notice they are hanging on to the shot buoy, and I'm thinking, I hope E did put a line on the shot at the bottom as we had a slight surface current, and for sure they were dragging it.
K looks at me and signals descend, we dump air and descend trying to follow the line which I then lose sight of fairly quickly as the boat's engines are in reverse and churning up the water, I spot K below me and continue down following her then notice the line and the weight at the bottom, which is slowly moving along the sandy bottom.
We follow the drag marks in the sand and reach the dive site after a brief swim along the track. This dive site is swarming with nudis and both K and I are soon totally absorbed in taking photographs and doing what we came for.
Around 55 mins we decide that it's time to ascend and we find the shot on top of part of one of the car wrecks, someone had obviously moved it back (in fact it was Buddy Pair X). While we were having a last look around, the shot basically took off and hit me on my left leg as it moved away from the reef ascending and disappearing from view.
WTF was going on? K shot her DSMB and we ascended. On surfacing we discovered that the boatman had decided to retrieve the shotline while we were still down unknown to anyone else on the boat, who were probably all too busy sorting their gear out. I was lucky to only be hit on the leg and not my head.
Although we had good dives, there was obviously some failings in Buddy Pair Y, who were poorly prepared for this trip, as well as the boatman, who like many here are poorly trained, and barely speak English.
For most part, diving here once you are qualified, does require some reasonable skills as most dives are square profile, and given we were on spring tides, some proficiency in using a DSMB is also preferential. It never ceases to amaze me how many people go on boat dives here and don't carry one.
We did have an opportunity later, during a social distancing lunch, to give some advice to them about their future diving, and tell them to try and be a bit more prepared. Still didn't figure out why one regulator had an LP port cover missing though, but that should have been a red flag to watch out for these guys at the beginning.
Diving here in UAE rarely includes guides or DMs, you provide confirmation of your certification and you get on with it. Gear checks are always made before the boat leaves the marina and everyone is responsible for their own sh!t, and off we go.
The only crew member, the boat driver is rarely a diver, and in this instance, this was the case.
There were two buddy pairs (X and Y) and two threesomes, of which I was a part of with K and E, whilst the other threesome comprised of a young couple with limited diving experience and an instructor (A) that we knew.
General rule is gear up in the marina, make sure everything is fine before casting off and heading to the first dive site.
Everyone starts getting their gear together, K knows buddy pair X as they were in the same BSAC club at one point, general introductions all round with the applied social distancing on the boat etc.
Buddy pair Y now have their first issue, one of their first stages is leaking badly when their air is turned on, and we soon discover that one of the LP ports is missing the cover from the first stage. K to the rescue as she always carries some spare parts, and that issue is resolved. Made me wonder though when the reg was last used, but hey, not my problem!
Out to the first dive site, mooring in place, nice and easy 30m dive, with K, E and myself in first as we and Buddy Pair X are the only ones on Nitrox, whilst the others were on air.
K and I have stages with 80% and 50% respectively, E is on sidemount, and one of couple X has a stage with 50%.
At the end of our dive, K, E and myself complete our deco stop and upon surfacing one of Buddy Pair Y surfaces next to us apparently having done an uncontrolled ascent from an unknown depth, and he is telling us he was unable to grab the rope (mooring line) to slow down. His computer is beeping loudly and he appears to be a bit stressed. English is not his first language.
K manages to calm him down and he is asking for oxygen. Since K still has about 150 bar of 80% she offers to take him down to 5m and provide some O2 albeit 80% at that depth. His buddy is nowhere to be seen, but apparently he is coming up the line.
After only two minutes at 5m K and the panicked diver surface, with the mouthpiece from the stage regulator missing, and not swallowed fortunately, but chewed off. Anyway we get everyone onboard and he appears fine, O2 offered but declined now his buddy is back on board. I'm not expecting this guy to do the second dive.
We cruise next to the second dive site, and since the mooring has been cut off, (by fishermen we assume), we drop a shot on the site using GPS as reference. The shot is a piece of concrete almost in the shape of a curling stone with a piece of rebar loop for the rope.
Surprisingly Buddy Pair Y elect to dive again. Instructor A and our buddy E go in first with a plan to run a line from the shot should it be far from the dive site (a bunch of wrecked cars), vis is usually poor (2-3m). Everyone is instructed not to pull on the mooring line. Buddy Pair X, drop off and the what is now Buddy Pair Z also drop off, with one descending immediately and the other flaffing around to deal with a free flow on the surface, which he gets under control and eventually descends.
Now we have Buddy Pair Y, who decide to dive again and are slow at gearing up. Of course neither of them had changed their tanks during the SI, and one of them is adding extra weights to his BCD pocket whilst the other one jumps overboard because he feels seasick. The boatman throws his BCD/ Tank overboard for him to put on, which he cannot manage. K jumps overboard to assist him in getting his gear on, and then he starts shouting that his tank is empty. K checks his gauge and tells him he has 200 bar, but his computer is not registering. I notice that his computer is on a lanyard attached to his wrist and not strapped to his wrist, it looked like an Aladin Air, but I can't confirm. Now while I've seen people tie off computers to D rings I've never seen anyone have one dangling from their wrist, which is just asking for trouble like banging it off a boat ladder whilst climbing up, or even losing it.
His buddy then proceeds to off board and swim to the shot line while I gear up and roll off. K has her gear passed to her and she is ready to go in a couple of minutes.
By now we're not sure what is going on with the pair of them, but I do notice they are hanging on to the shot buoy, and I'm thinking, I hope E did put a line on the shot at the bottom as we had a slight surface current, and for sure they were dragging it.
K looks at me and signals descend, we dump air and descend trying to follow the line which I then lose sight of fairly quickly as the boat's engines are in reverse and churning up the water, I spot K below me and continue down following her then notice the line and the weight at the bottom, which is slowly moving along the sandy bottom.
We follow the drag marks in the sand and reach the dive site after a brief swim along the track. This dive site is swarming with nudis and both K and I are soon totally absorbed in taking photographs and doing what we came for.
Around 55 mins we decide that it's time to ascend and we find the shot on top of part of one of the car wrecks, someone had obviously moved it back (in fact it was Buddy Pair X). While we were having a last look around, the shot basically took off and hit me on my left leg as it moved away from the reef ascending and disappearing from view.
WTF was going on? K shot her DSMB and we ascended. On surfacing we discovered that the boatman had decided to retrieve the shotline while we were still down unknown to anyone else on the boat, who were probably all too busy sorting their gear out. I was lucky to only be hit on the leg and not my head.
Although we had good dives, there was obviously some failings in Buddy Pair Y, who were poorly prepared for this trip, as well as the boatman, who like many here are poorly trained, and barely speak English.
For most part, diving here once you are qualified, does require some reasonable skills as most dives are square profile, and given we were on spring tides, some proficiency in using a DSMB is also preferential. It never ceases to amaze me how many people go on boat dives here and don't carry one.
We did have an opportunity later, during a social distancing lunch, to give some advice to them about their future diving, and tell them to try and be a bit more prepared. Still didn't figure out why one regulator had an LP port cover missing though, but that should have been a red flag to watch out for these guys at the beginning.
