Your "excrement hitting the oscillating cooling device" Moments

[lundysd]

I'd like to hear some funny (or at least informative) stories about your "aw crap" moments underwater. After having witnessed one of these about a week ago, I think hearing what has happened to others can help us all learn and avoid having to change our underwear upon surfacing


I had just finished a night dive to about 100 feet on a liveaboard. It was a great dive, and I was just finishing an extended safety stop, enjoying life. Just as I was about to surface, I began venting my wing and I heard this little "pop." I looked down in horror as my inflator was sitting in my hand, but my corrugated hose was nowhere to be seen (it had popped off). I was diving an LP108 with no wet suit, and the sinking feeling in my stomach slowly began to encompass my entire body as I dropped into the blackness. I swam like hell upwards as my wing filled with water and made it to the ladder, bug-eyed and out of breath. In retrospect it was more funny than anything else, but I now know that keeping a balanced rig is more than just a good idea -- it's a necessity. Had I not been able to swim it up without any buoyancy, I would have been FUBAR.....

 

[Penguinboy]

On my 8th dive I was diving off a catamaran on a reef cruise in Queensland, Aus. I was using rental gear and had checked it all beforehand - so no trouble. Hopped in the water and began a nice easy dive in shallow clear water - 50' tops. Suddenly my tank starts moving and shifting around fairly uncomfortably. The strap must have come loose when I got in the water. Luckily I had the DM close to me so I just descended and sat on the sand while he fixed the dodgy strap! Having done that we carried on with a great dive.

While he was fixing my tank a really big turtle swam by in front of us, and after the dive he came up to me and said "Great Dive - shame we didn't see any turtles today though"............

Reminds me to always double check my tank strap and get it wet first before tightening! Not a scary situation but one you might want to avoid

 

[tstormdiver]

While on a live aboard in the Bahamas, I was on a very shallow (15') night dive on a wreck that was swarming with stingrays.That night I was struggling with my buoyancy a bit. One moment I was trying to shoot to the surface, the next I was sinking like a rock. On one of those times that I was sinking, my belly was only about 2' off the bottom when a moderate sized stingray shot out from under me. This was only a couple of weeks after Steve Irwin's tragic accident & all I could think of was "Oh, my gosh! Oh, my Gosh!". I'm sure the stingray was thinking the same thing at seeing a clumsy human coming down on top of him at a pretty good clip. I finally got my buoyancy under control & Had one awesome dive that night, complete with stingrays (of course), turtles & eels.

 

[Diver0001]

I got snagged on a wreck once. I tried to swim through a door at about 90ft and there was some stuff hanging down from above the door. Somehow a piece of metal got jammed beween the A-clamp on my regulator and the tank valve and I was royally stuck. I couldn't move forward, backward, turn sign to my buddy, nothing. It was like a giant hand was holding me in place. To make matters worse, I couldn't see my buddy and I wasn't sure that he saw it happen and I wasn't sure that he was really paying attention to me. He caught up to me about the time I was starting to squirm out of my gear..... At the time I didn't have the feeling that this was getting really pear shapped though and we dealt with it adequately. No leftover trauma.

A really funny one happened a couple of years ago with a buddy of mine. His BCD packed it in and he spent the better part of the dive sort of "moon walking" over the bottom to get back to shore. We had a really good laugh about that one...

R..

 

[redhawktwo]

My wife and I was doing a dive in a local quarry, I was at about 15 feet, she was above me at around 10 feet. We were swimming along when all of a sudden I felt something hit my back and push me down into the silt. Just before this had happened, I had picked up a sunken tank on the bottom, so my first thought was that "uh oh, I done pulled something on top of me". Finally got started for the surface where my wife was at and she yells over that she had dropped her weight belt. Come to find out that the weight belt had landed on me, and was still attached to my tank valves.

Definately got my attention....

She needs to check that weight belt, then I need to double check it....

 

[Cacia]

On a dark penetration, our number one guy reached the bottom (120) in very tight quarters and dropped his reel..no problem as he started to get his spagetti cave line under control. Number 3 and 4 behind me signal me to proceed down the steps in to the tiny engine room, not seeing #1 having a problem...I shook my head "no" and then they proceeded to crawl over my body. We were in a tiny space and I could feel them crawling all over me and it freaked me out. I rolled into a fetus and prayed...and cursed people that always need to dive their plan...once they stopped mauling me...I left the wreck alone, happy to have survived them.

Another time we were told we were not going to hook in, the current too swift (Blue Corner). The plan was just to drift. JB had about 800 pounds left (40-50 ft) and so I put him on my long hose because everyone else had quite a bit I think and I had 2200 or so. We were not in a good place to ascend as the current would take him over the wall onto a rocky area and maybe the boat would have a hard time following him in that spot (and I did not want to get swept on the rocks!)

So..then the dive guide sees a big fantastic pelagic orgy of feeding sharks and baitballs of jacks or something and decides to park us all on the wall. I did not have my reef hook out and JB is on my long hose. So he take our hands and places us on the wall. Normally I would not go for that, but I did not really want to drift solo into the wall of shark circus either... The current is forceful and my mask is filling with water...I can't fix it because I am holding on for dear life and I know if I am swept off JB's reg will pop out...he doesn't use a bungeed and I am having doubts that he could find his secondary easily, he has about 8 dives. I am feeling really stupid struggling with the camera, strobe etc. So I just decided to take pictures anyway because the current was so strong, nothing we did at this point would matter.

I look over and the guy next to me, his board shorts are around his knees...and he is trying to spread his legs in a desperate attempt to keep them from being swept off.

 

[fire_diver]

I look over and the guy next to me, his board shorts are around his knees...and he is trying to spread his legs in a desperate attempt to keep them from being swept off.

I hope you took a pic of that! Too funny.

FD

 

[TSandM]

I did a dive with Bob (NW Grateful Diver) where I was borrowing his new DSS Torus wing. When I went to put it on my backplate, I realized the slots in the plate were wider than the "window" in the wing, so the cambands were kind of making a detour inward, and then back out to the tanks. I thought to myself, "This is a recipe for a loose tank," and proceeded to be very careful to make sure everything was as tight and tense as possible.

On this particular dive, we went down to the logs at the bottom of Cove 2, which are at about 100 feet, to see if the octopus was still on her eggs. As we arrived there, I realized the tank was too loose and mobile, and I signalled Bob, because I was sure the tank was loose in the bands. He came over and gave the tank a shove and signalled OK. I swam on about 15 or 20 feet, and realized nothing had gotten better; if anything, the tank was feeling more mobile and looser. I signalled again, and he came over, and the second time, he remembered that I should have TWO cambands -- and only one was showing.

The other had come uncammed, and the tank was not only mobile, but had slipped down. At this point, Bob was faced with the task of getting my tank back in position, resecuring the errant camband, and doing all of this at 100 feet on somebody who is only about three pounds negative with everything vented. I went belly down in the silt, grabbing a branch which happened to be handy in an effort to make myself more inert. The combined efforts of Bob, who was sitting on my back, and me, belly down in the silt, reduced the viz to absolute zero. I'm lying on my stomach in the mud, unable to see anything, aware that we are at 100 feet and the clock on gas and no deco time is ticking, and hoping Bob is succeeding in getting the tank back where it belongs.

He did, and we marched slowly but steadily to the shallows, me watching me gas every two minutes or so. We got to about 30 feet, and began an ascent as we had agreed in the dive plan. I shot a bag at 20 feet, and at ten, discovered that if you plan your weighting to be neutral at ten feet with 500 psi, then at 500 psi and 10 feet, you cannot put any downward tension on the line to a bag without shooting yourself to the surface. A very uncomfortable end to the dive.

Lessons learned: If you are worried something is not optimal, the place to solve it is on the surface, before the dive. Plan your weighting as though you are going to have to use all the gas you have, because the dive where you have to do that is NOT the one to be unable to keep a shallow stop because you are underweighted. And always dive with buddies who can cope with putting your tank back in the bands with equanimity at 100 feet

 

[KMD]

Was down in San Diego doing a boat dive. The current was moderate but nothing too strong, but there were some serious rollers on the surface. Was chilling at the ten foot on stop at the anchor line when bow of the boat comes down and smacks me a good hard one right on the tanks.

I never swam down so hard in my life. My recollection is that I just materialized at twenty.

 

[rawls]

On one of our small dive boats once. Visibility 100 feet. Excited to get in the water. Side roll into the water...Start finning to the hang line and wasn't getting anywhere...At least I thought I was finning. Came back to the surface to see the captain holding my fins in his hands with a great big grin and asked me "how was your dive"....