ligersandtions
Contributor
My worst dive doesn't compare to many of yours, but here goes. A couple months ago, I was going out on a boat trip. It was my first boat trip in a long time (most of the diving I do is shore diving, in which we descend into 20 feet of water, and then swim out to depth....or sometimes it doesn't get much deeper). It was also the first dive I did with my regular buddy (hubby) in probably two months.
The captain and DM were less than helpful in telling us where the "reef" (small platform) was, so we were all kind of on our own. We get in the water and are ready to drop down. The bottom was 80+ feet away, and I was aware of that. My buddy and I signalled that we were ready to descend, so we dumped air and started the descent. He started actively swimming down, while I wanted to drop down horizontally and nearly neutral. I have ear issues, so fast descents aren't my thing. Buddy realizes he's ahead of me, so he stops to wait....I catch up and signal that my ear is not cooperating easily and I'd need to take my time....he says okay but somehow ended up dropping quickly again. At this point, I'm in mid-water, with little visibility, and other people are dropping faster than me. Bubbles are coming up while I'm going "down"....I'm getting disoriented. I look at my depth gauge....48 feet....less than 40 to go....drop for a little bit....look at my gauge again....40 feet. WTH????!!!!???? How am I going up? I'm so disoriented at this time that I dump some more air, ignore my ears again, try to find a reference to continue my descent.
By the time I finally made it to the bottom and located my buddy, we both looked at each other waiting for the other to lead. It's our normal understanding that he leads, but he wanted me to....I didn't want to because I had no idea where we were going, was kind of freaked out from my stupid descent, and the visibility was crap (oh, this "platform", which I'm not convinced exists, was on a sandy bottom, with nothing else around). Finally, I convince my buddy to lead and he takes off. We're completely silted out because everyone is (unsuccessfully) looking for this stupid platform. We'd swim into and then out of silt clouds, which was kind of disorienting. I was frustrated, he was frustrated, we couldn't find anything, and decided to call the dive.
The ascent was almost as fun as the descent. I'm finding that I'm not good at this mid-water stuff....we're trying to ascend with no reference and it's playing games with my head. I always ascend horizontally and nearly neutral....I can't get myself to do this for some reason. At some point, I was so frustrated that I decided to swim myself up and dump as necessary to keep myself just slightly positive.
Everything about that dive sucked. But nothing went majorly wrong....it was just that I didn't feel like I was in control at all and had no idea how to make it better. I need to work on my mid-water stuff....and my buddy and I desperately need to work on communication.
The captain and DM were less than helpful in telling us where the "reef" (small platform) was, so we were all kind of on our own. We get in the water and are ready to drop down. The bottom was 80+ feet away, and I was aware of that. My buddy and I signalled that we were ready to descend, so we dumped air and started the descent. He started actively swimming down, while I wanted to drop down horizontally and nearly neutral. I have ear issues, so fast descents aren't my thing. Buddy realizes he's ahead of me, so he stops to wait....I catch up and signal that my ear is not cooperating easily and I'd need to take my time....he says okay but somehow ended up dropping quickly again. At this point, I'm in mid-water, with little visibility, and other people are dropping faster than me. Bubbles are coming up while I'm going "down"....I'm getting disoriented. I look at my depth gauge....48 feet....less than 40 to go....drop for a little bit....look at my gauge again....40 feet. WTH????!!!!???? How am I going up? I'm so disoriented at this time that I dump some more air, ignore my ears again, try to find a reference to continue my descent.
By the time I finally made it to the bottom and located my buddy, we both looked at each other waiting for the other to lead. It's our normal understanding that he leads, but he wanted me to....I didn't want to because I had no idea where we were going, was kind of freaked out from my stupid descent, and the visibility was crap (oh, this "platform", which I'm not convinced exists, was on a sandy bottom, with nothing else around). Finally, I convince my buddy to lead and he takes off. We're completely silted out because everyone is (unsuccessfully) looking for this stupid platform. We'd swim into and then out of silt clouds, which was kind of disorienting. I was frustrated, he was frustrated, we couldn't find anything, and decided to call the dive.
The ascent was almost as fun as the descent. I'm finding that I'm not good at this mid-water stuff....we're trying to ascend with no reference and it's playing games with my head. I always ascend horizontally and nearly neutral....I can't get myself to do this for some reason. At some point, I was so frustrated that I decided to swim myself up and dump as necessary to keep myself just slightly positive.
Everything about that dive sucked. But nothing went majorly wrong....it was just that I didn't feel like I was in control at all and had no idea how to make it better. I need to work on my mid-water stuff....and my buddy and I desperately need to work on communication.
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