What's your personal scuba-related curse?

[AdivingBel]

The Spree. Had it booked twice back when I was "sunbirding" (staying in the Keys during the summer for diving as opposed to "snowbirding" which involves walkers & curb feelers...j/k ). Got blown out both times. I was ready to try for a third time and Wookie sold the boat.

 

[kelemvor]

Christ of the Abyss in KL. I've booked trips with operators that dive that site four times now. Each time, the captains have decided on a different site after the boat left the dock for various reasons.

 

[NYCNaiad]

Nice topic! I have weird things happen to me:

1. Coup in the Maldives. (Thought it was just normal day-to-day activities. How should I know that machine guns weren't usual? There have only been 2 coups there. Lucky me.)
   
   
2. Three-week vacation in the Philippines:
   • 1st week: Sinus infection.
   • 2nd week: Great diving!
   • 3rd week: Got dengue on an island which never had dengue before.
   • 4th-6th weeks: Too ill to leave the country. During dengue recovery, fell & badly hurt my ankle.
   
   
3. Left at sea in the Bahamas.
   
   
4. Dive buddy slipped & fell during in the rain hurting herself badly. When I went to get her ice, I also slipped & fell hurting myself badly.
   
   
5. Caught in a downward current in a whirlpool with the string from my safety sausage wrapped around my legs.
   
   
6. Well-reviewed liveaboard in the Solomon Islands which had never had problems broke down the first day I was aboard & because a unique part was needed, the boat couldn't leave port for 2-3 weeks & the trip was cancelled. (I ended up island hopping & having a blast, but still.)

And those are just the big things off the top of my head!

This is why I have back-up plans & always have medical insurance, flight insurance, trip insurance & dive insurance.

All of you are now scared to dive with me now, right? lol

 

[tilikum]

You are cursed!

 

[MelasLithos]

PADI cards. It always takes months for me to receive them.

1/ OW: our instructor clearly didn't do his job of filling our class in time. It took us more than one month of emailing, contacting him through Facebook, etc. Before finally receiving the PADI temporary card email (it took calling the diveshop to have our files sent to PADI. We should have started with that...). Then, more than a month after that, I received an email from PADI saying that my card was returned to them and to confirm my address. Address that was correct... One more month, and I finally received my card.

2/ AOW: I don't know why, in this time of internet and quick communication, our instructor decided to send our paper file by mail to PADI, instead of doing everything online (and I know they have internet at the resort, we did exchange emails with him before going there, and stayed at that resort). So again, it took ages. This time, I don't know why, I never received any confirmation email from PADI, so it had me worried that my file had been lost into the post (my buddy did receive emails, etc.). Finally, approx. 2 weeks after my buddy and a couple of months after my course, my card finally appeared in the mail.

3/ A bunch of specialties: this time, I was pretty fed up, and paid the express fees myself to make sure I received my cards without any mishaps. It still took approximately a month to receive them, but at least, that was much quicker than previously.

My curse clearly lays with PADI cards only. Last courses were done with a TDI instructor. The next morning, I had received the email for my ecards and two weeks later my cards arrived in my mailbox.

I am currently doing my rescue course, through PADI. I have received notification that they have sent me my EFR card. Good move on the part of my instructor, he is having it sent to the dive shop (for once, I'm doing the course locally). I didn't even know it was possible, and I am hopping that this will be enough to break the curse. Fingers crossed.

 

[MelasLithos]

Cold. Getting very, very cold. Even in 82 degree water where most people aren't even wearing exposure protection at all.

That too. But now that I'm starting to own quite a pile of different layers, it's getting better.

 

[James R]

Everyone in the water seems to stay close to me, probably so they can be in my photos

 

[boulderjohn]

I have two major curses.

The first is the weather. It's been mostly in the last decade, but I have been extremely unlucky with the weather. I have had countless dives canceled or been miserable on the surface so many times I have almost started to expect it. This past weekend was an incredible exception. The weather in the southwest broke records up until the weekend of my dives. Our dive site hit 105° two days before our dive, which would have been unbearable in our dry suits (water temperature 60°). On our dives, the weather was in the 70s--perfect. Contrast that with our dives at the same site in December. We arrived at 62°, and just as we finished our gear setup, a front rolled through. The temperature dropped to 16°, and it was so windy the snow was falling horizontally. We went back to the motel. The snow stopped, so we went back out and dived. It was still 16°, but by gearing up in the motel room, diving, and then returning to the motel with all our gear still set up, it was tolerable.

The second is related to the first--the Oriskany. I have been physically in the Pensacola region on 11 different days over several years with the hope of diving that wreck without ever doing so. The first two days were beautifully sunny, without a breath of wind, but the operator assured us things were really bad at the site. I have concluded that the Oriskany does not exist--it is a myth to draw tourists to the area, where they are then told the weather is too bad to dive it, so they should do some other dive instead.

 

[wKkaY]

I only shoot an smb occasionally to practice and keep myself current. It seems like every time i choose to practice, I end up missing cool stuff in the shallows because I'm too task loaded!

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Nice topic! I have weird things happen to me:

1. Coup in the Maldives. (Thought it was just normal day-to-day activities. How should I know that machine guns weren't usual? There have only been 2 coups there. Lucky me.)

February, 2012 ???

I was there ... in fact, flew back to Male from the south the day after the coup. There were soldiers unloading what were obviously heavy boxes off of a boat. We thought it might be ammo ... but it turned out to be money. It seems that protesting in the Maldives is a paid profession ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)