One of my many dumb dives....
Many, many years ago while in the Coast Guard we were diving on the large concrete blocks that hold the buoys in place. Basically, we'd go down and remove the shackles that held the chains so the ship could pull them up to the surface to work on or replace as necessary.
Our "normal" method of doing this was to use a large Zodiac Grand Mark something or other boat, hang our canvas tool bucket over the side and lower it to about 40', and we'd grab the bucket on the way down. The added weight of the bucket helped us get down very quickly. This is where I learned to humb loudly on the descent.
We always dove with 2 divers exiting from the opposite sides of the boat, and the "tool tender" went over the side that had the bucket line. The 3rd diver stayed in the boat and was supposed to check us before we entered and was theoretically the "safety" diver. HA!
I should mention here that our standard entry was a backroll and then an immediate "twist" to go straight down head first. To make an even faster ascent, we got used to not inhaling when we went over the side, so we were even more negative.
On this particular dive I was the tool tender, so I put on the twin steel tanks, went in at the same time as my team mate, didn't breath to go down faster, did my twist, and then on the way down I reached for my regulator cause' I was getting near the tool bucket and had to stop to get it.
Unfortunately, the reg wasn't there. I had forgotten to put it on!
So......here I was REALLY needing air, no bs about it, sort of descending at some incredible rate, and you can fill in the rest.
Thank god I was going down right beside the line, and you have absolutely NO IDEA how fast I dumped those tanks (but it was world record time), grabbed the line, and hauled my butt back up to the surface.
When I got there the "safety" diver was standing there smiling like an friggin idiot holding my reg in his hand saying something like "Gee, I think you forgot this!"
If I would have had our bangstick he would have been fish food. No questions asked.
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