Scary or embarrassing moments

[Zero]

My scariest would of been on the USS Aaron Ward in The Solomons. Did a dive on the stern and everyone was diving star burst so get back to the mooring and ascend. After about 5 minutes everyones back but theres one extra deco bottle with no one attached. Sent a bag to the surface to get them to check for anyone on the surface but no one had come up yet. After about 10 more minutes one of the boys come down and got the spare tank. The other diver had come up the bridge mooring instead of the stern. Everything worked out fine but for the minutes that passed waiting to know where he was it seemed like hours.

Matt

[butch103]

[QUOTE=santelmo;1913]embarrassing:
1: got lost during compass navigation. all i could see is green...murky green...when i looked at my dive computer i was sinking/descending deeper and deeper 50feet...60feet...70feet... that's when i decided to abort the exercise and ascend slowly...
QUOTE]

How did you get lost with a compass?

[Sarah]

Butch, maybe he lost the compass!

[SoCalDiveGirl]

I'd say it was a bit embarrassing on my first doubles dive when I went to the back of the boat to enter the water... and I got stuck in the gate.. Crew was pulling from the frontside, pushing from the backside... and finally my buddy gave me a boot to the rear and off I went
I learned that when a gate is narrow, and you are in doubles, then you MUST turn sideways...

[Zero]

A very funny site is seeing people sit on the gunwhale with a set of twins and do a backward roll after they have done up their crotch strap around the bar. You just dont know how strong webbing is till your hanging upside down in a rolling swell.

Matt

[lars2923]

I've read the post. First, I am happy to read that everyone returned.
I read some talk about fear. It's natural, I've had it.
"I've never do that again" Thats good, what did you learn?
I mean what did you really learn?
For example, the lady who passed out at depth. Have you ever gone back down to 140'? What did you learn? Was it a one time case? As you descend
and you begin to reach that 100' mark, do you begin to feel the apprehension, the fear of what happen that day? Do you continue to decend?
Why or why not?
Some other interesting stories, like diving with the newbies. I feel it's my responsibility, as a seasoned professional to to that. I owe it to them and
their future buddy. I like teaching and don't mind helping on the surface or underwater. Prevention is worth a .....
As for a story or two, I have some. One that comes to mind is when I was
at depth, oh maybe 130 and I enter a hole on a reef. This hole was almost 50
feet long. Another diver just enter before me. I was in maybe 15-20 feet,
when I felt the warm flush run through my body. I knew what that sign meant. I've had it before. It was narcosis. Now, I'm in a hole, it was leading upwards, but I was in a hole. I knew and said, I've got to ascend to eliviate the narcosis. I was a bit concerned, because I do not like narcosis. I new that if I could ascend, it would go away, but I had a person in front of me.
All I could think of was please move a little faster, I'm not feeling too good.
As soon as I could begin to see the end of the tunnel I noticed that I could exit one of two ways and they stop at the fork. I'm like please move NOW.
I still had my wits about me, but all the same, this hot flush of something was running through my body. I exited at about 80', layed faced down on the bottom until I got control. Ahhhhh. I felt better and continued the dive.

My worse experience, and in 28 years of diving, this is my personal worse,
I have been on a 7 day dive trip. I has doing a minimum of 4 - 5 dives a day.
Some down to 150 but most around the 90-100 foot range, with 50-60 in the late morning and late afternoons. I was on my 24th dive of the week. It was the first of four dives on my last day of diving. I was on Nitrox and down around 70-80 feet. My buddy was may 20 feet below me and 50 feet behind.
(an example of what not to do) when my whole body began to Zzzzzzzzz.
It was humming all over. I've never experienced that before. I signal to the DM that something is wrong but I"m OK and I'm going to ascend a bit. As I ascended, the humming, buzzing subsided. Kewl, I'll hand here, I'm still diving!
Then here it comes again... Bzzzzzzz all over my body, tingley all over..
i ascend some more, it stops.. Kewl, I'm still diving... Bzzzzzzzz, ***?
OK, time to get out. I signal the DM, that I'll attempt a safety stop then head to the boat. At the 15 or so foot mark, Bzzzzzzzzzzz, ***? I'm still breathing and I'm still diving.. to the surface I go. Only a 20 minute dive..
OK, I'm still alive...but I'm not diving..
The boat picks me up, I tell them what happen, we get to the dock and there they are, waiting for me.. to take me to the recompressional chamber
for a checkup and observation. That is when I got my lession on O2 toxicity.
I remember they mentioned something about it during my nitrox course... but
I just got first hand experience. I went on to learn more about it, understand it, how to use the formulas, and realized, there is more to time underwater than timing your No Decompression limit (nitrogen load) there Oxygen load too and one can reach it's limit before another.
It took that even for me to experience another phenomena of gases under pressure and time. Now I really like diving because it excited me in to learning more..
Because of the way the dive shop conducted themself, I was impressed and have been diving with them every year for over 10 years now.
Well that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

[SoCalDiveGirl]

One that comes to mind is when I was
at depth, oh maybe 130 and I enter a hole on a reef. This hole was almost 50
feet long. Another diver just enter before me. I was in maybe 15-20 feet,
when I felt the warm flush run through my body. I knew what that sign meant. I've had it before. It was narcosis.

Yup- thats always my first obvious sign of narcosis too... That oh-so-familiar, yet unwanted warm flush- I've experienced it twice (in about 325 dives)... Funny feeling to be in 53F water in a drysuit, and suddenly sweating.. Miserable feeling, but it's much better to feel hot than to experience any significant mental impairments...

[wetwillie]

I was in the gulf of Mexico doing a deep air salvage job removing debris from a scrapped platform in 180'. It was hard hat diving and I was wearing my superlite 17 B tethered to the surface... I had a steel plate the size of a sheet of plywood and 1" thick laying flat on the bottom. I had a down line to the site from the barge and they sent a crane line down to me with a couple of nylon slings. I got the bad boy slung up and had the tops side crew add a little tension to it to make sure the slings wouldn't slip.... then I backed way of the side behind a big steal trash basket while the crew tried to bring up the load.....Mud suction held the plate on the bottom and they kept adding force to the line...finally the suction broke loose and the plate came free.. as it did it planned out in the water and spun around it chased me down to my safe spot and hit the side of the hat shearing off the valve assembly....the hat started to flood. I couldn't reach the surface because my umbilical and down line were tied together by the spinning plate....about four breaths of air were in the "dead space" of the hat and I could feel the water rise inside with each intake.. I told tops side what had happened on the com and they were trying to life everything.... after that last breath the saltwater came in and filled my lungs...after the fist gulp that burned a little it wasn't so bad and for a few seconds I was "breathing" water ..pretty cool I thought. I knew I was done and made my peace with the water spirit and lost consciousness... The next thing I knew was waking up in a decompression chamber on the barge( doing deco dives) and the emt in there had just shocked me the third time and got me started again....They flew me out after my chamber time and sent me to center in New Orleans... I was treated for pneumonia in the lungs with antibiotics and after four weeks off I was cleared to dive again no permanent damage done....I went back diving for 2 more years....
a year almost to the day I was down 40' cutting a "flushed" six inch line left over from Hurricane Andrew and hit a gas pocket of o2 and hydrogen( residual from other divers cutting) that was in a rise of the line... this one blew my hat off my head and knocked me out. I woke up in the Hospital they had to bring me back in the chamber again but after they got the heart pumping I didn't regain consciousness until I made the Hospital... pneumonia again and ruptured ear drums..... out for six months and the Dr. cleared me again...... dove another year and decided to change professions... became a cop it was safer..lol..

[SoCalDiveGirl]

dang... thats scary just to read about

[seasnake]

OMG! That is an amazing story! All it makes me think about is the wannabe commercial divers out doing "working" dives without proper training, support, or equipment! You must love it if you kept coming back for more. What is your diving like now? Any long term affects?