What is your worst dive?

[FredT]

3 stand out. 2 were working.

1 was an injured back under 40' of milky water. When the body feels like it's been dipped in boiling oil from the nipples down it's no problem at all to bite through a mouthpiece. EMTs strapped me to a body board before removing me from the water as I screamed too much when they tried to do it the other way around. The drugs in the hospital would have been a lot of fun if I hadn't hurt so bad.

The second was a dive checking on pipe placement in black water. Long story short I had a 60" diameter concrete pipe dropped on me under about 15' of water. 2.5 hours later I freed myself, as the crane operator who dropped it on me had given up trying to restart the crane and bugged out. I didn't blow the o-ring when I took the reg off the tank before closing the valve. Thank God for Everglades muck as it gave enough compression room to make room for me under the pipe. I never did the crane operator again.

The last one bears here, this was typed up about a decade ago for another board.
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I guess it’s time to type this one in again. There have been 3 times that I have almost resigned myself to being fish food. 2 were working underwater, so those don’t really count here. The third happened while fishing in the “Hell Divers” spearfishing tournament out of Empire, La. 12 to 15 years ago. Zieg and I were out with a fellow named Carl Lowe on his boat and the owner of a now defunct dive shop in Slidell LA. Carl is one of those types that is indomitable and fun to watch, but you never want to buddy with him. I’ve been at 160’ in 200’ vis and all I can see of him below me is well-expanded bubbles coming into view. At any rate the rules of the Hell Divers Rodeo is that all fish must be boated by a single diver. Buddies can’t help even by laying a hand on the line. At the time I was diving with a relatively new JBL 450 Magnum with a classic cable rig. That is SST cable with quick disconnect halyard clip at the cable attachment to the muzzle, no shock line.

I was at about 110’ on the second rig when the grandfather of all AJs swims by. This fish was about as long as Zieg, with his XL Jets on. Zieg was diving with a smaller JBL “sawed of magnum” at the time. Zieg was actually closer, but didn’t have the gun for that size fish. I _thought_ I did. I got a shot at the brain, and missed it low by about an inch. This put the shaft cleanly through the head right at the roof of the mouth behind the eye. I owned the fish since I had a shaft through his skull, but I hadn’t actually hurt him enough to kill him this week. The fish did as AJs do and headed to the bottom. Did I mention the bottom was about 800’ down? I didn’t want to go that deep and the next cross member was near 200’ and too deep for me to be fighting a fish that size with a partially used steel 72 on my back. I inflated my BC (Scubapro BCP batwing) and swam around a pile to foul the cable. In this I was partially successful. We removed ALL the barnacles from that pile from about 120’ to about 140’ as the wrapped cable and I slid down it. The fish hadn’t slowed down much. In the effort to turn the fish I was also holding on to the 3' diameter piling with both legs and my left arm. Somewhere in the middle of this "Minute (month?) From Hell" I managed to kill a large bristle worm by crushing it with the inside of my bare left arm. Zieg later recalled one very mangled one about 10” long drifting down when he came back to look for me. That could well be the culprit. I found out something about bristle worms that day. The silica spines also carry a neurotoxin! Suddenly the left side of my body didn’t work; this included the portion of my diaphragm on that side. This is not to say the right side worked much better but I still had a little control of it. Suddenly I was at 160’, couldn’t inhale, had a full BC to the point the overpressure valve was cracking, and to top it all off if felt as if someone had poured molten steel on my left arm. Zieg was off chasing a cobia that had come in to see what the ruckus was all about at the time.

I did the only thing I could do. I opened my hand. The fish and my “new” gun went to 800’ pretty fast. I on the other side of the game was now headed up with a speed to challenge the AJ’s downward rush. We had about 15’ of Mississippi River water murk with about 3-5 inch vis floating on top of the clean water we were hunting. I attempted to remember where the cross members were in it and tried to angle my trajectory to miss them. I got lucky then and made it to the surface without hitting a cross bar. If I had hit one at least the fully inflated BC would have made the body recovery possible. I got clipped off to a galvanic protection cable where it went into the water and just floated for a while. There was enough surface chop running so that as long as I could keep the airway open the waves helped me breathe enough to stay conscious. The toxin wore off some in about 15 minutes and I could breathe enough to get to and into the boat. This was NOT a good day.

BTW the arm healed in about 6 weeks. Zieg and I team hunt now, and no longer go for the biggest fish _every_ time. If Zieg had been there I may well have tried to get to him for help. We found out later that that may have been the last thing I would have done. I NEEDED the wave action to keep me breathing. To try to handle this emergency UW would have been fatal. In 30+ years of diving this is the ONLY time I can remember where handling an emergency underwater would have been more dangerous than bolting to the surface.

FT

 

[phil8diver]

I was on a dive in Fortune Island, Philippines with this guy who constantly made comments on how I dived and how well he dived. He insisted we go down to 45 meters which I told him that I am unwilling since my dive buddy was a novice. I suggested 35 meters max depth. So we went and despite the fact that we were underwater, he was still pointing and trying to teach me how to dive. First of all he was not even an instructor nor a dive master, secondly based on my videos, his buoyancy control was about equal to mine which is considered to be average/normal. After all this, I was so disturbed by his rambling (can't find a better word for despite we were underwater), during my ascent from 10 meters, I accidentally inflated my BCD instead of deflating it which caused my to shoot up. Once I got out of the water, I simply told him to shut up. That was my worst dive ever.

 

[PvtStash]

was my first attempt at wreck diving...

3 hr. roadtrip up to Sanilac, Mi. ... everybody unloads by the docks and after 20min. or so we find out we're not diving... (waves)

3 hr. roadtrip back home...



Worst Dive Ever!

 

[Rhone Man]

I was 12 years old, diving with my Dad and one of his friends. Because I had a 50 cu ft tank, I ran out first, so my Dad took me to the surface. We were about 100 yards from the boat and I volunteered to swim back alone, and also to take the bag of lobsters. I was a pretty strong swimmer, so I was confident. But the waves were bigger than I thought. I began to get very, very tired. No BCDs back in those days to help you out. I began to get into a real flap. Being a kid I was paranoid about dropping the lobsters. Came dangerous close to losing it all in a blind panic. Eventually swam on my back "tank down" (little bit of bouyancy it gave helped) and made it back to the boat, exhausted. Probably the closest I have ever come to a serious diving accident.

And I never once thought to drop my weight belt.

 

[DOkie]

It was my first AOW dive quite a few years ago. The instructor had taken out experienced divers along with his students on a wreck dive in Lake Michigan. He let the experienced divers go first so that the students didn't silt up the wreck for them. By the time we got in, it was dusk and viz on this wreck is generally 5' so it was like doing a night dive to 90 feet. I was nervous to begin with so the first mistake I made was to not rinse out my mask after spraying it with defog. (See where I'm going?) Got down to 25' or so and started having problems with my regulator. Stopped on the line and my husband (who was a dive master) kept trying to tell me that he needed to see my reg (wasn't givin it up for NOTHIN). He reached out with lightening speed (grin) and switched it from "predive" do "dive"... Wonders of technology. Continued the dive, got to the wreck and the instructor decided to do the swim of a life-time. Since I had fly vision going on (the non-rinsing of the mask) I couldn's see very well. Freezing in a wet-suit and scared half to death with a vice grip on my husband that you wouldn't believe! After 16 years of marriage, I fell in love with my husband again right then and there when he stopped me and took me back to the rope. (I actually hugged it). He brought me up safe and sound because he could see that it was getting to be a bit much. I think it took me 3 years to finally tell him about the mask thing (yes, he laughed) but I NEVER did THAT again. Now when I take new divers down and they think they've made an idiot of themselves I can honestly say that they have NOTHING to worry about.

2nd worst dive? Same instructor - few years later in Rescue class. Let all the guys assist in lugging each other onto the boat but made me lug my husband by myself. I'm 102 lbs and he's 220.

Why stay with the instuctor? Cuz I can do things I never thought I was capable of!!!

 

[jrdavis_jupfl]

For me, it was my very first sea dive during OW certification training.

The pool stuff had gone pretty well: take off the mask, replace and clear no problem, remove BC under water and replace OK. I was feeling confident about the upcoming 30 ft dive. After all, it was only 15 feet deeper than what I did successfully in the pool. Unfortunately, I had no idea that sea sickness could change everything.

Our dive boat started out on the FL intercoastal waterway with a only slight chop. But then we passed through the Palm Beach inlet into the Atlantic. Seas were 4-6 feet and it was raining. I felt a bit queasy going out, but everyone told me once you get out of the boat and in the water sea sickness goes away. And it did. Until the safety stop. Apparently, even at 16 ft there's quite a bit of surge in rough seas. About a minute and a half into the stop, I start vomiting. I was more surprised than panicked. The rational part of my brain repeated what my instructor told me that if I can exhale through my regulator, I can puke through it as well. And I did for the remainder of the safety stop and a fair part of getting back to and on the dive boat. Puke, breathe, puke, breathe....

I feel really bad for the poor woman who was downwind of me on the boat. The image of her hair with flecks of the scrambled eggs I ate for breakfast in it will remain with me always. Cripes, even after docking and unloading I fertilized the bushes at the dive shop.

I hope that's the worst I experience, and I learned that as long as you still have air, you're OK.

Oh, and that you should always check rental regulators for bits of someone's breakfast before you use them.

 

[clifftondiver]

Mine wasn't so much the dive itself, it was the overall experience. It was my first dive in a used drysuit I purchased. It had been pressure-tested mind you. We get out to the drop point, drop down, and at about 20' my right shoulder and arm start to get cold. I call the dive, but tell the other 2 guys to continue. I go back to the truck and by the time I get there i have seems like 2 gallons of cold Monterey water in each foot. I get to the truck, it's locked and my buddy (who's still underwater) has the key. The outside temperature is a balmy 45 degrees and overcast. I can't even get out of my suit b/c it's a back-zip. I flag down someone to unzip my zip and discover the cargo window of truck is unlocked. I crawl into the truck where my clothes and towels are located and am ok. But that wasn't enough for me. I, stupidly, open the driver-side door prompting the alarm to sound! So there i am in a truck full of scuba gear, soaking wet, cold, standing next to a truck that's alarming in the middle of Carmel, CA (where Clint Eastwood was the mayor) on a Saturday monrning. The entire experience sucked, but I'm still diving!!

 

[htn123]

Well, it's an "interesting" dive, not the worst but here goes.

After finished my AOW, my brother from CA came over and we went to Pensacola, FL for a spearfishing trip. There were 6 spearos on the boat, the four jumped down first and my brother and I was the last to enter the water. The two of us came up on a wreck and I saw a big AJ below me. I started kicking hard to follow the AJ. Everything was fine, I almost pull the trigger and then I decided to look at the depth gauge. 105'!!!!!. Mind you, I dove ow before but never below 100'. Well, I got panic, but was able to tell myself, "look at the fist, look at the fish".... then I started kicking up a bit, looked at the SPG again and it said 90'. Fish is gone but the attack was over... thanks god.

While all of these were going on, the four other spearos went their own ways and were shooting. All of the sudden we saw all 4 of them bolted to the surface without a deco stop :shocked2:. I was looking at my bro and was like "what the heck"? All of a sudden, 2 big bulls started circling us !!! We started up and they played tag team, one on the front and one on the back and the circle kept tighter and tighter:shocked2:. So to make the story short, that was the longest 3 minutes deco of my life. We got the the surface and they went their way.

That was an interesting experience to say the least.

 

[Avonthediver]

I have two dives that I consider my worst...

the first being almost seeing my wife being hit by an anchor by a guy that was teaching my brother AOW. all he wanted to do was get our Attention!

the second almost being hit by a pontoon boat the day after i got married! I was down looking for a pair of glasses that had been lost and as i came up the anchor line a summer storm can up and brought the boat up and over were i was coming out of the water and almost hit me in the head!
on the plus i did find the glasses!

 

[DOkie]

Well, it's an "interesting" dive, not the worst but here goes.

After finished my AOW, my brother from CA came over and we went to Pensacola, FL for a spearfishing trip. There were 6 spearos on the boat, the four jumped down first and my brother and I was the last to enter the water. The two of us came up on a wreck and I saw a big AJ below me. I started kicking hard to follow the AJ. Everything was fine, I almost pull the trigger and then I decided to look at the depth gauge. 105'!!!!!. Mind you, I dove ow before but never below 100'. Well, I got panic, but was able to tell myself, "look at the fist, look at the fish".... then I started kicking up a bit, looked at the SPG again and it said 90'. Fish is gone but the attack was over... thanks god.

While all of these were going on, the four other spearos went their own ways and were shooting. All of the sudden we saw all 4 of them bolted to the surface without a deco stop :shocked2:. I was looking at my bro and was like "what the heck"? All of a sudden, 2 big bulls started circling us !!! We started up and they played tag team, one on the front and one on the back and the circle kept tighter and tighter:shocked2:. So to make the story short, that was the longest 3 minutes deco of my life. We got the the surface and they went their way.

That was an interesting experience to say the least.

That's too funny!! For years, my husband tried to get me to go diving in the ocean and my biggest fear was of sharks. Well, he finally wore me down and after getting on a dive boat in Ft. Lauderdale, FL with the captain telling me that "people dive for years and never see a shark" I was doing good. I am not kidding you.... First 10 feet in the water and two started circling us and followed us to the bottom (70' reef). When we got the to reef (I dropped rather quickly I'll add) there was a dive flag and a weight belt laying on the reef. I cannot repeat what was going through my head at that time!! I still dive in the ocean, but I've made up some new hand signals since then...