So I'm fine admitting when I'm wrong and make mistakes. I think we all have "brain farts" underwater. Why I decided to be exceptionally stupid on this particular day is beyond me... just one of those days I suppose. It does not help at all that I only got about 3.5 hours of sleep the night before.
Saturday was like any other Saturday. I really try to go oyster diving (during the season) when I can. It's something different, always a good crew. Lots of laughs with diving and eating mixed in. Couldn't ask for a better Saturday morning. On with life by 12-1pm.
The idea is if you're new, start with a buddy and as you gain experience and become comfortable you can go out on your own. We're in 12' water, sometimes 15' tops. Viz is usually 6'. I dive a doubles rig as I'm just too lazy to switch gear back for single tank diving... unscrewing the backplate, filling other tanks. No thanks. I just dive my doubles. They're comfortable and I like them, and I don't have to get back on the boat to change tanks... I just keep diving. I also dive dry. Just giving you a bit of a background so now you have an idea what I look like when I jump overboard. Water was ~ 50F, very calm day.
Well Saturday I started my dive like and other time.. I meander around for a little bit checking out the landscape and getting situated and all of a sudden I hear bubbles. Just slight bubbles, from what sounds like behind my left ear. It's like champagne bubbles. Not bad, but very annoying. It even kind of comes and goes. I reach back and see if I can hear a change in pitch as I mess with the valves... nada. I continue the dive. I don't know why but a small leak like that is like nails on a chalkboard to me. It just really takes away from the dive. I breath bubbles, they don't bother me.. but I hear a small leak it drives me nuts. I knew the leak was small enough that it didn't warrant doing anything about it.... but I had to make it stop, or at least try.
So at 15' deep I decide it would be a good idea to try and remove my kit and see if I can spot the bubbles. I unbuckled at the waist and took my right shoulder strap off (always the right 1st because the drysuit inflator is on under the left arm)... and the right side of my body raised up as if I was trying to answer a question that I knew the answer to back in the 1st grade. Thank God that the buckle didn't slip all the way out of the crotch strap (which is exactly what it's supposed to do). So here I am like a turtle with one arm out of his shell flipped on his back... what an absolute cluster fck. So I had to think things through... did not panic, but my breathing went up a good bit with all the huffing and puffing. My best course of action was to to try and reach back to get the strap back on. I managed to do it in 3-4 attempts, but it was NOT easy. I was thinking while I was trying to do it, @ 39 I can do this, but you add another 15 years... I'm not sure that I could pull it off? The whole ordeal took maybe 4 minutes, but felt like a good bit longer than that.
I was picturing in my head that I would have to bail out if I couldn't get the strap back on, which also would of been really dumb. There's no way I would have been able to get my gear. Everything would have been lost. Maybe we could find it, but maybe they would have to find it on a later dive. And by then rust, verdigris, whatever would have meant a whole rebuild for all 4 regs and possible a tear down of the tanks if there was any water incursion, and that's if I even got them back. Hindsight that would have also been really stupid. Absolute worst case is I should have inflated myself back to the surface with the inflator that I still had easy access to and then I could roll over and get things situated while everything was nice and buoyant together at the surface. I've done this before, get out of gear, let it float, get back in gear.. fairly simple.
This could have ended really badly.. probably not death, but lost gear? I'm sure I would have forgotten to disconnect my suit inflator so maybe ripped suit on the way up? I did stop, I did think, but in all the excitement and me being tired I wasn't thinking 100% clearly. This was all so dumb on my part. There was a minute where I knew I was the punchline of some joke that I played on myself and could do nothing but laugh at how ridiculous this would look if someone came upon me. And the guys I dive with? Most likely would have stolen my oysters that I had collected and waved as they disappeared into the either!!
The leak you ask... the damn spg
!!!!!.. how hard was it to unclip and check that out??? Another kicker... I've removed my gear kit for the same issue on the platform in a quarry. It went way better then this. I guess the way I was positioned this time? Doesn't matter, moral to the story for me is never ever take my kit off underwater. Maybe if I had a balanced rig and wore a weight belt and got both myself and the kit neutral, but that's a lot of work changing weight as we go through the seasons. Not something I'm interested in doing.
So there's my story. It was a dumb move. I am open to criticism's... I'm sure there are those on the board that just placed me on their "do not dive with this guy" list! That's ok, I hope that something I posted helps someone else along the way. I don't walk on water. I make mistakes. I thought I was a pretty good diver, I am tech certified (believe it or not!)... but this instance has me 2nd guessing if they ever should have given me an OW card, LOL!
Cheers, and Happy Holidays... I hope this made someone chuckle at least a bit
Saturday was like any other Saturday. I really try to go oyster diving (during the season) when I can. It's something different, always a good crew. Lots of laughs with diving and eating mixed in. Couldn't ask for a better Saturday morning. On with life by 12-1pm.
The idea is if you're new, start with a buddy and as you gain experience and become comfortable you can go out on your own. We're in 12' water, sometimes 15' tops. Viz is usually 6'. I dive a doubles rig as I'm just too lazy to switch gear back for single tank diving... unscrewing the backplate, filling other tanks. No thanks. I just dive my doubles. They're comfortable and I like them, and I don't have to get back on the boat to change tanks... I just keep diving. I also dive dry. Just giving you a bit of a background so now you have an idea what I look like when I jump overboard. Water was ~ 50F, very calm day.
Well Saturday I started my dive like and other time.. I meander around for a little bit checking out the landscape and getting situated and all of a sudden I hear bubbles. Just slight bubbles, from what sounds like behind my left ear. It's like champagne bubbles. Not bad, but very annoying. It even kind of comes and goes. I reach back and see if I can hear a change in pitch as I mess with the valves... nada. I continue the dive. I don't know why but a small leak like that is like nails on a chalkboard to me. It just really takes away from the dive. I breath bubbles, they don't bother me.. but I hear a small leak it drives me nuts. I knew the leak was small enough that it didn't warrant doing anything about it.... but I had to make it stop, or at least try.
So at 15' deep I decide it would be a good idea to try and remove my kit and see if I can spot the bubbles. I unbuckled at the waist and took my right shoulder strap off (always the right 1st because the drysuit inflator is on under the left arm)... and the right side of my body raised up as if I was trying to answer a question that I knew the answer to back in the 1st grade. Thank God that the buckle didn't slip all the way out of the crotch strap (which is exactly what it's supposed to do). So here I am like a turtle with one arm out of his shell flipped on his back... what an absolute cluster fck. So I had to think things through... did not panic, but my breathing went up a good bit with all the huffing and puffing. My best course of action was to to try and reach back to get the strap back on. I managed to do it in 3-4 attempts, but it was NOT easy. I was thinking while I was trying to do it, @ 39 I can do this, but you add another 15 years... I'm not sure that I could pull it off? The whole ordeal took maybe 4 minutes, but felt like a good bit longer than that.
I was picturing in my head that I would have to bail out if I couldn't get the strap back on, which also would of been really dumb. There's no way I would have been able to get my gear. Everything would have been lost. Maybe we could find it, but maybe they would have to find it on a later dive. And by then rust, verdigris, whatever would have meant a whole rebuild for all 4 regs and possible a tear down of the tanks if there was any water incursion, and that's if I even got them back. Hindsight that would have also been really stupid. Absolute worst case is I should have inflated myself back to the surface with the inflator that I still had easy access to and then I could roll over and get things situated while everything was nice and buoyant together at the surface. I've done this before, get out of gear, let it float, get back in gear.. fairly simple.
This could have ended really badly.. probably not death, but lost gear? I'm sure I would have forgotten to disconnect my suit inflator so maybe ripped suit on the way up? I did stop, I did think, but in all the excitement and me being tired I wasn't thinking 100% clearly. This was all so dumb on my part. There was a minute where I knew I was the punchline of some joke that I played on myself and could do nothing but laugh at how ridiculous this would look if someone came upon me. And the guys I dive with? Most likely would have stolen my oysters that I had collected and waved as they disappeared into the either!!
The leak you ask... the damn spg
!!!!!.. how hard was it to unclip and check that out??? Another kicker... I've removed my gear kit for the same issue on the platform in a quarry. It went way better then this. I guess the way I was positioned this time? Doesn't matter, moral to the story for me is never ever take my kit off underwater. Maybe if I had a balanced rig and wore a weight belt and got both myself and the kit neutral, but that's a lot of work changing weight as we go through the seasons. Not something I'm interested in doing.So there's my story. It was a dumb move. I am open to criticism's... I'm sure there are those on the board that just placed me on their "do not dive with this guy" list! That's ok, I hope that something I posted helps someone else along the way. I don't walk on water. I make mistakes. I thought I was a pretty good diver, I am tech certified (believe it or not!)... but this instance has me 2nd guessing if they ever should have given me an OW card, LOL!
Cheers, and Happy Holidays... I hope this made someone chuckle at least a bit
