Whats your WORST dive ever?

[Fish_Whisperer]

My worst dive, to date, is a toss-up between my first drysuit dive and diving in Tim's Ford lake in Tennessee, helping the local yacht club hook up new anchor chains for their boats. Zero viz, silt that was easily two feet deep, and for all of the work and freezing my butt off and going through the nervewracking task of connecting the new chains, it was only 15' deep, so it doesn't count as a dive. ((WHAAAAA!!!!))

 

[Jafo123]

My worst dive was my first O/W training dive for drisute. Didn't have a problem with the feet up thing but did bounce up and down with the buoyancy. It was frustrating to say the least.

 

[RoyN]

The WORST dive I ever done was the one I never do. There is nothing more worst then sitting around the house and not being active. Even my TV hasn't been used for quite a long time, I haven't played any computer game since I got my Open Water dive.

 

[Blitz]

My worst dive ever involved a Blackhawk helicopter and a low level, very fast flight to a hyperbaric chamber. And strangley I look back with nostalgia.......

 

[MSilvia]

I'm also torn... my worst dive could be the one where the boat failed to pick us up at the end of a drift dive off Belize, leaving 7 divers floating around in open water for 2 hours.

It could be the one where an "instabuddy" joined my twosome on a 100' night dive off Gloucester, MA, then proceeded to have a panic attack on the down line, knock the light out of my buddy's hand with his flailing, and then "ride" him to the surface in an uncontrolled ascent.

It's also possible it was the one my buddy and I opted to sit out on a liveaboard trip because the current was too swift, only to watch a failed rescue attempt that ended with a dead diver.

Then again, the time I caught my Weezle in my drysuit zipper was pretty bad... it led to me discovering near freezing water leaking into my suit at 145' with a 15 minute deco obligation.

I think though that I'm going to go with my first dive after OW certification class. I didn't have enough weight, so I had a constant struggle to stay submerged, burned through all my air quickly, and left feeling far more frustrated than enthused.

 

[rottielover]

Wow, most of these stories leave me feeling like my "worst dive ever" was far more fun than what I thought it was!

I'm going to go with my first dive after OW cert as well... We actually signed up for and did the PPB class right after our OW dives...

After learning about weighting a bit more in-depth (pardon the pun), I ended up dropping about 10#'s of lead, when I really should have only dropped 5#. We were using our 1/2 full (or 1/2 empty depending ) tanks from our last OW dive that morning, so we started out with around 1500 or 1800 Psi. After about oh 20-30 min (I don't remember and I don't have my log book handy) I was starting to get down to around 700 or so PSI and that's when I started feeling "light". My wife and I were on the platform, I had finished my skills and she was with the instructor doing her skills when all the sudden I felt myself floating up a bit more with each breath.

I dumped all the air out of my BC and for the next 3-4 breath's I was fine, but then I started to float again... With each breath the tank got lighter, and I went up more. By the time I hit 15' I was head down kicking to stay down. Luckily the DM for our dive was paying close attention, and I gave her the big THUMB, we surfaced together and waited for the instructor and my wife to surface (only about 5 min later, but felt like forever).

The worst part of this dive however, was that another instructor was following us around (unknown to me at the time) because he wanted some more time on his rebreather. When it came to the part when I was head down kicking, I accidently smak'd him right in the head (hey 3' viz and I'm staring at the bottom).

I felt like a total idiot after that dive, and must have apologized 10,000 times too him. Lucky for me, he's a great guy, and he turned out to be our instructor a year later for our Nitrox cert! Amazing who you "bump" into underwater isn't it?

 

[TravelSimone]

My worst dive was a cattle boat off of Key West. We had heard that Key West wasn't the best place to dive off of the Keys, but we had an extra day while we were down there and thought "how bad can it be?".

There was a very weak dive briefing where they basically pointed to a general area and told us that was the best place to head where there was a little "wreck". We swam around for 20 minutes or so in a variety of directions to finally come across the "wreck" which was some flat sort of boat that had very little life around it. Other than that, there was nothing to see except for sand and a shockingly small amount of fish. After a few more minutes of simply swimming around, we surfaced to see where we were in relation to the boat. We were quite far away.

The only "good" thing was that we had surfaced with plenty of air in our tanks, so that we could just dip below the surface to make the long swim underwater back to the boat. The crappy thing was that most divers on that boat didn't see anything and those that saw something saw that "wreck". Never again.

 

[drbill]

My worst dive? Let's see, that's a hard one. OK. I was in the water off Guadalupe Island, Baja California, Mexico, trying to film the tuna that pass by this world famous spear fishing site. A storm was beginning to brew and the winds were picking up, causing the sea to get a bit rough and a current to pick up. I was striggling against the current to get back to the boat, but my camera housing just added too much drag for me to make much forward progress. Due to the stress, I suffered a mild heart attack but was still able to fin slowly. Now as many of you know, Guadalupe is a premiere location for great whites. I started seeing the fins circling around me. I kept my cool and didn't panic, but inside I was really apprehensive. Then I woke up.

OK, worst dive was probably the King Cruiser near Koh Phi Phi in Thailand. My drop dead gorgeous Dutch DM (and dive buddy) had misread the tide tables and we (along with several other boats) were diving the site at peak tidal current. The vis was minimal to non-existent. We got down to the large ferry and she wanted to penetrate it. I had no desire since I'm not into that kind of penetration, especially with no wreck diving equipment and single tanks. She went ahead and quickly disappeared... first into the dark and then into the cabin. After what seemed like an eternity, she re-emerged and shortly after we were blown off the wreck into the void. We couldn't see a sign of the wreck, but I used my intuition and we did relocate it after a bit. When we surfaced after our safety stop, she looked at me and said "I knew you would come up smiling." My smile had nothing to do with the dive!

The only other dives that might qualify would be one of my early dives on Catalina when my buddy and I dropped to 90 feet to film a worm... only to discover that the tanks we'd pulled off the "filled" rack (there was no pressure gauge to check them and this was before SPG's were common) had not been, and both of our J-valves had already been pulled.

Second one was when I followed a bat ray down to about 75 feet without my pony bottle, and the tank valve clogged... cutting off ALL air flow out of the tank... just after I had exhaled with a purged BCD. It was a "long" 70 sec CESA and I canned any further diving that day.

 

[lmorin]

Bonaire Salt pier twilight/night dive. Started with a surface swim out 100 yds. About to descend when DM discovered his mask was missing. Bad sign. He swam back to shore and found it in the surf (he'd had it on his forehead entering). Starting to get dark and primary light worked for a while before failing because (it turned out) the LED bulb blew (and, I mean exploded) because of a missing heat sink (manufacturing problem). Glo-toob tank light also failed (o-ring prob.); had already loaned my backup to another diver in our group, so jerry-rigged wife's secondary as a too-bright alternative. Did not like the dive; house reef at our hotel (Plaza) was better. DM swam ahead of everyone doing his own thing, not attending to the group. As the dive progressed, I started to go low on air. Wife and I tried to catch DM to tell him we were surfacing, but quickly gave up as he was finning around to his own tune. Never checked the group. Wife and I held a brief underwater discussion, at which point DM appeared out of nowhere. We indicated air was getting low and that we would head to surface. He said no, stay with him, not much time left. Crazy! Now, down to 350 lb air (no real danger because we knew exactly where we were under the pier and had effectively been in a 15 ft safety stop for 3-4 min). DM started to turn away and I grabbed him and gestured in no uncertain terms, that wife and I were surfacing. He nodded OK, then took the rest for another 5 or 10 min. Wife and I swam to shore. On shore, the DM was pissed at us for surfacing saying, we should not have; should have stayed with group; didn't tell him we were going. Totally ridiculous and everyone in our group knew it. The situation was not pleasant, particularly since we had had to arrange for the Salt Pier dive, provide the truck and to hire the DM. The poor communication and lack of leadership by DM was quite disconcerting, to say the least. My wife was particularly upset, even though I was the person with the air problem. More importantly, the experience has cast a pall over her previously strong interest in night diving. She is slowly overcoming it, but recovery to the initial level of night diving enthusiasm is taking time. We have quite a few more dives under our belts now. We would do things a bit differently, the primary one being not hiring that DM again.

 

[dallasdivergirl]

I think I have a tie. First night dive in Roatan. I was afraid to turn on my light and I was struggling the whole dive. Then when I got my new mask that leaked and leaked and leaked.