Wow, that is a scary story! I know there are still many divers out there who advocate deep air diving, but this is a good illustration of what can happen ... So glad to hear everything turned out okay, it could've been very bad ...Originally Posted by Ascend
Embarassing for me: a couple times jumping in below freezing water with my drysuit zipper still open an inch ... self-entry drysuit ... the equivalent of pouring ice water into your underwear
Scary: Anytime I've ever been working too hard underwater and start breathing too heavy ... that's when I've noticed you start to feel the panic start building in the back of your mind. You have to get a grip on it fast before it gets out of control.
I think my scariest moment was having a new diver put with me and my buddy by an instructor that I "trusted" on a dive that new diver didn't belong on, I wasn't that experienced myself at the time, but I had AOW. A wreck, low viz, 90'. We had agreed on a turn pressure, but when we reached the stern of the wreck, the half way point, the new diver showed me his guage: 500 psi! Because of the currents we had been instructed to ascend on the mooring line, so started trucking back. But like a lot of new divers, he wouldn't swim "with" us, he wanted to stay behind us. After just a couple minutes he was not only behind but above me, his gauge showing only a couple hundred psi, and I couldn't entice him down to me with my octo. I remember thinking I would have to go up to him, so I looked away for just a second to grab my power inflator, and when I looked up he was gone. We started a controlled ascent after him, all the way up I'm figuring he made an out of control ascent. The worst part was breaking the surface ... and the new diver was nowhere to be seen ... my mind went straight to embolism and then he sank bank down and was now somewhere at 90' in the murky viz. I was saying over and over to my buddy, "this is not good, this is not good!" ... Then I went to signal the dive boat and saw him climbing up over the gunwhale ... he had decided to swim back to the boat once he surfaced instead of waiting for us. I was really scared for those few minutes ... I decided to make a lot of changes in my gear and my diving procedures from that experience.
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