Please do share yours!
My latest moment occurred today.
We were doing an extremely shallow dive today at a site called Long Beach. Max depth is about 6m ( ~ 20 feet). Get out into the water, deflate my BCD, exhale and ...
...
...
nothing happens. So I duck-dive down to about 4m wondering what is going on. I haven't had to duck-dive for 50 or 60 dives now. As soon as I get to the bottom I immediately notice that I am positive ... VERY positive. Now I am very confused because I haven't changed my setup since the dive at the exact same site last week and I was fine then.
I start going through a mental checklist, all the while furiously finning to stay down. Haven't changed wetsuit ... haven't changed booties ... haven't changed weightbelt ...
...
...
WHERE THE ^%#@ IS MY WEIGHTBELT?!?!?
Nooblet me had just attempted to dive missing my customary 5kg (~ 11 lbs) weightbelt.
But wait ... I managed to redeem myself!
After spending a miserable 3 or 4 minutes down there I surfaced. My friend surfaces with me and asks what is wrong. After seeing his reaction I decide that there is NO WAY that I am descending again to explain to the others why I was going back to the car.
Luckily by that time I had hatched a cunning plan. If I couldn't gain any more negative buoyancy I would instead lose some positive buoyancy! I was wearing a 2 piece wetsuit (Farmer John with long sleeves and a tunic over that type style) so I removed my tunic. Only problem was that I couldn't leave it floating there 50m from shore and I was not taking it back, that would have taken far too long.
So I grabbed my spool, tied my tunic off to it and descended again, trailing my new neoprene dive float!
Because I had 3kgs in the form of my SS BP and was diving with a LOT of air (3300 litres or ~ 116 cft) I was only slightly positive after shedding the extra buoyancy of my tunic. The positive buoyancy was slight enough not to be uncomfortable.
And thus I completed my dive. Our group had 3 floats that dive, 2 standard ones and one not-so-standard neoprene one.
After I got out the water I couldn't stop ing about the fact that I had dived with 5kgs less than normal with very little problems.
So yeah ... very embarrassing but you can bet that I'm not forgetting my weightbelt again.
P.S. The water was 14 degrees C (~ 57 F) so my head got a bit chilly without it's hood. I was willing to go without it because I knew it was going to be a short dive.
My latest moment occurred today.
We were doing an extremely shallow dive today at a site called Long Beach. Max depth is about 6m ( ~ 20 feet). Get out into the water, deflate my BCD, exhale and ...
...
...
nothing happens. So I duck-dive down to about 4m wondering what is going on. I haven't had to duck-dive for 50 or 60 dives now. As soon as I get to the bottom I immediately notice that I am positive ... VERY positive. Now I am very confused because I haven't changed my setup since the dive at the exact same site last week and I was fine then.
I start going through a mental checklist, all the while furiously finning to stay down. Haven't changed wetsuit ... haven't changed booties ... haven't changed weightbelt ...
...
...
WHERE THE ^%#@ IS MY WEIGHTBELT?!?!?
Nooblet me had just attempted to dive missing my customary 5kg (~ 11 lbs) weightbelt.
But wait ... I managed to redeem myself!
After spending a miserable 3 or 4 minutes down there I surfaced. My friend surfaces with me and asks what is wrong. After seeing his reaction I decide that there is NO WAY that I am descending again to explain to the others why I was going back to the car.
Luckily by that time I had hatched a cunning plan. If I couldn't gain any more negative buoyancy I would instead lose some positive buoyancy! I was wearing a 2 piece wetsuit (Farmer John with long sleeves and a tunic over that type style) so I removed my tunic. Only problem was that I couldn't leave it floating there 50m from shore and I was not taking it back, that would have taken far too long.
So I grabbed my spool, tied my tunic off to it and descended again, trailing my new neoprene dive float!
Because I had 3kgs in the form of my SS BP and was diving with a LOT of air (3300 litres or ~ 116 cft) I was only slightly positive after shedding the extra buoyancy of my tunic. The positive buoyancy was slight enough not to be uncomfortable.
And thus I completed my dive. Our group had 3 floats that dive, 2 standard ones and one not-so-standard neoprene one.
After I got out the water I couldn't stop ing about the fact that I had dived with 5kgs less than normal with very little problems.
So yeah ... very embarrassing but you can bet that I'm not forgetting my weightbelt again.
P.S. The water was 14 degrees C (~ 57 F) so my head got a bit chilly without it's hood. I was willing to go without it because I knew it was going to be a short dive.