What's the most intimidating dive you've done or thing that happened to you?

[Eric Sedletzky]

All of these stories sound like a bunch of S.H.I.T. to me!
Sudden
High
Intensity
Training

 

[lowviz]

Eric,
We all know what is right, proper, and correct. But the vagaries of real life always compromise a key point or two when diving "interesting" sites.

So do you dive or drive (back home) with your tail between your legs at the very first issue?

 

[JBFG]

My only scary dive was during my AOW course in Mexico.
I've never been deeper than 60' at this time.
1st dive was going to be a wreck. I was really excited as it was my 1st wreck. My instructor is giving us the pre-dive speach once we are on all geared up and ready to go. He than informed me that the dive was going to be 100' deep. I already told him my diving history prior to this but he "forgot" it when he planned my course.
regardless I was looking forward to it. slow descent was the key as I never been to that dept. well sure enough as I'm sitting on the patform ready to do a back roll, the instructor informs me that we are up current and we need to do a rapid descent if not we would miss the wreck. I was really confuse and uncomfortable with this whole thing. At least, I would have him to guide me through this. Just before he spashes, he again informs me that we have about 45 seconds to hit the bottom if not we will miss it. on that note, he back rolls and start sinking. i'm dumbfounded and not happy. the crew is yelling at me to go and to hurry up.
I ended up rolling in the water and do the dive but i was certainly not happy or enjoying it. I had no clue what i was doing or what to do. I burned all my air really quickly and I had to air share with my star instructor for most of the dive.

back at the surface he heard all about it. I had a new instructor for the afternoon dive. I would never do something like that again.

 

[Lake Hickory Scuba]

My most intimidating dive was a time related matter. It was the 4th of July, 2014. I had just pulled into the parking lot of my shop when my fire pager went off. Long story short, a woman drove her vehicle into the lake, on the other end of the lake from my shop. Thankfully though my Fire Department's boat was docked at our marina (because we just had finished the day before, servicing it), and my Public Safety Gear was already set up, as it always is in the summer time. So as I ran inside and yelled at my business partner (my father, also part of the Fire Department's Dive Team) to grab his gear, we both jumped onto the boat and hauled ass up the lake. By the time we got on scene, several other Firemen had already arrived, along with NC Wildlife, Alexander County Sheriff's Office, and NC Highway Patrol. As soon as we got the boat on scene, NC Wildlife agents began to yell at us that a woman attempted suicide by driving her vehicle into the lake, and they had reason to believe her young child was still in the vehicle. So I grabbed a line and a buoy and immediately entered the water. After reaching the bottom and making a quick assessment of the scene, I did a parameter sweep of the vehicle. The only door that was accessible (due to the vehicle being upside down) was the rear passenger door. As I opened the door, the visibility went black. I began doing an arm's length search of the backseat, and immediately came into contact with a child safety seat. At this point my heart sunk, you see I have a toddler of my own who is still in a car seat, and all I could imagine was, what if this was my child. So after getting my composure back, I continued to search the backseat for the child. After what seamed hours (in reality probably only a minute or two), I determined the child was not in the vehicle. I then secured the buoy and rope to the vehicle and made my ascent. Skipping ahead, we were able to salvage the vehicle from the lake, via a local wrecker service, and later it was discovered the woman was going through a divorce and that her husband was battling her for custody, in which she lost. After driving her vehicle into the lake, a local fisherman witnessed it and was able to get her out prior to it completely submerging. She had made statements that she wanted to die, because she had nothing else to live for, and that she wanted to take her family with her. Here is a short clip as we brought the vehicle up.


Now I have done so many recovery dives, including bodies, evidence, and more vehicles than I can count, but this particular dive was probably the most intimidating for me, because it wasn't just a recovery, it started as a possible rescue of a small child (same age as my child) trapped in a vehicle submerged at the bottom of a lake.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

My most intimidating dive was the dive that also convinced me that caves are not for me. I was told of an old tunnel between two limestone quarries north of me. There are actually three of them run parallel to each other. Max depth around 20 ft water wise and each is about 20 feet wide. They are heavily silted in. Myself and two other divers, both cave trained and one a cave instructor decided to check them out with the idea that they may be suitable for overhead training. They go completely underwater about 50 yds from the mouth of the side we had access to. Then it's a 500 ft traverse to the other end based on the amount of line we ran off of the reel. Really cool dive, some artifacts, no signs of collapse, but there were a couple times that I got the thought in the back of my head that I've got 60 to 100 feet of rock over my head and I'm 100 ft or so in either direction farther than I can swim on one breath. Did not like the feeling. I have never had that inside of a wreck. We only checked two of the passages. One was cut off from the quarries and had about 10 ft of crystal clear cold water in it and was actually not a tunnel but part of the mine and had huge room and pillar construction. It went way back in and I'd like to take my kayak back up for it as it is really too shallow to dive. The other was green and had a branch going to the tunnel beside it. We didn't jump to it.

 

[mattia_v]

My Scariest two were sequential, but months apart. First was the Galapagos day boat dive at Gordon's Rocks. I think it was dive number 25 or so (too few, in retrospect) - lots of chop, churning seas and current between the pinnacles, and my perfect weighting for still water meant I could not descend. Rest of the group did (4 divers, 2 DMs). Lost my buddy, made it t the boat, got more a few pounds of weight and one DM who had quickly noticed I hadn't made it down came up and hand held me to depth, out of the chop. By that point I was stressed, freaked out, and the rental reg was twitchy and occasionally free flowing into my mouth, not helping matters. Reunited with he group but blew though my tank in about 10-15 minutes before calming down. Finished the dive sharing the DMs much larger tank, calmed down, saw some nice scalloped hammerheads, but it was not a relaxing dive. My buddy (girlfriend) was also freaked because she'd 'lost' me.

The next dive was a few months later in very calm waters in The Netherlands, but it was cold (9mm wetsuit not quite cutting it) and dark (20 feet and a flashlight was needed, no bottom visible, 1-2 meter vis) and the memory of the previous scary dive came up. So started down a few feet, and had to surface to relax. Took a few deep breaths, composed myself and it was all fine from there. Glad I continued and managed to cure the nerves, and regain some confidence.

 

[MaxBottomtime]

I was making a dive that involved a long swim over sand to reach a submerged steel dock with two buddies. As we were making our way back we were swimming along a line I had laid the day before. My buddy Jeff was ahead while Claudette and I swam side by side. Suddenly I was being thrown violently side to side. I was wearing double 120s so I knew it had to be something pretty strong tossing me around. I thought Jeff, who is 6'4" and around 250# was playing shark. As I turned to look back a bull sea lion bit me on the elbow. I punched him in the nose and he released me and swam off.
While holding my elbow with my right hand I gave Claudette the thumbs up with my left. We reached the surface to find large swells had come in while we were underwater. Jeff, who by now was on the surface twenty feet ahead of us told me he could only hear me during the swell interval. He heard sea lion...elbow...blood.
Fortunately my drysuit didn't tear, although the pressure of the bite had punctured my skin, drawing a small amount of blood. My camera, which was tethered to my right wrist popped up nearby. It turned out that when I punched the sea lion I hit the shutter, getting an out of focus shot of the bull's face.

Jeff took a photo of me that day and later added in a sea lion.

 

[TMHeimer]

Quite a few of these stories are indeed intimidating. I have nothing to compare to those. Got caught in what was probably a rip current near the jetty (& shore) in S. Padre Island TX and managed to eventually get out on the nasty jetty. Some time with cramps were unsettling. A couple of times an ebbing tide in Nova Scotia found me uncomfortably far from shore. On my 2nd ever boat dive (78 fsw I think) my "experienced" buddy deserted me to hunt 3 lobsters. Mild stuff in comparison. My dives are usually very benign.

 

[Bob DBF]

Lobster diving several years back on a trip that didn't make it to Cortez Bank because of a storm moving. Since we were close we dove Santa Barbara island a little after midnight with a full moon and clear water, and the last dive I watched the sun come up underwater.

We ran to the south side of Santa Cruz Island and made two dives as the seas were coming up, then hid in a cove on that side of the island with two other boats.

We were the only boat to come out and dive the next day. The plan was that all dives were to be made in front of the boat after we were anchored as the current was high as were the seas. This was reiterated quite harshly after one diver came up well off the starboard quarter of the boat and would not make the trailing line and could have been easily been missed without his SMB, and then he sat out the rest of the day.

The third dive they set the hook and I was up and ready to go when the anchor dragged. I sat down and waited as they brought the boat around to try again. The next time I waited longer after the hook was set before I started for the gate, but once again the anchor dragged and once again I sat down and did some creative muttering. As the boat slipped a little as it was setting the anchor once again, I started taking off my gear off and then got up to find my cup and some coffee.

I made the rest of the dives but that one was just too intimidating for my blood. I knew if I made that dive, the boat would not be there when I came up. The anchor held, but then again I was not in the water.


Bob
-----------------
May not quit often, but he does quit.

 

[Centrals]

Nothing dramatic.
My first tec wreck dive in South China Sea. Blue sky and calm sea but I couldn't see any land mass anywhere. And the first giant stride really need convincing.