When does diving become "ridiculous"?

[Diving Dubai]

With experience, comes acceptance - what seems hard becomes the norm

I remember being really really nervous on my first dive with my club, which was also the first dive with my then new girlfriend (now my wife). I was inwardly panicking about doing my first ever backward roll. The fact that I was happy with a giant stride from 8' and this roll was maybe 2' didn't matter. Of course once I did it I wondered what all the fuss was about.

I like the rest of us can list a whole load of seemingly silly things that at the time seemed a huge thing to conquer.

Somethings, I doubt I'll ever conquer. Just the thought of having to do a no mask swim in sea water, scares the cr@p out of me. That's my hard ceiling right there

 

[Storker]

the big brass balls

And me believing they were made of polished stainless steel. Just shows how wrong one can be.

 

[Killerflyingbugs]

I would think bronze would be the proper metal .

Back to the topic at hand, I think the "ridiculous" factor changes greatly with the individual. I bet there are people out there that would do a long deep cave dive but would consider a ocean dive too much.

 

[sunnyboy]

As stated by others, the answer is personal and different for everyone.

I now find any type of "trust me" dive qualifies as a poor thing to do, no matter what the dive or training/skill level.

 

[boulderjohn]

With experience, comes acceptance - what seems hard becomes the norm

I just came back from a trip to Bali, and in the last week in Tulamben my group of 3 had a DM assigned to us for the boat dives--we did the shore dives on our own. The DM would sometimes include in his briefing that our maximum depth would be "20 meters/80 feet." At one point I did tell him that 20 meters was only 66 feet, but I didn't think it mattered, since almost all the sites we visited were not much deeper than that anyway. Our dives were all an hour long, almost exactly, and everyone in our group surfaced with around 1200 PSI or more every time. On one dive, though, the reef went much deeper than that, and it looked pretty good below his normal depth, but he stuck to 20 meters. I said something about maybe going deeper if there was something to see down there, and he did not reply. I thought maybe he got the hint.

Nope. On our next day of diving, we again went to a reef with a deep drop off, and things looked pretty good deeper, so I went down to take a look. My friends came with me. The reef was gorgeous there--the best we saw in all of Bali. At that point a white tip reef shark went by, and I went just a little deeper to video it. After the dive, one of my friends said something to the DM about how beautiful the reef was there, and the DM's response was to look at me with something close to horror and say "You must have gone deeper than 80 feet!" I told him I had gone all the way to 103 feet, and the look on his face suggested that he was shocked I had survived. I pointed to my two friends and said they had deep diver certification, meaning they were certified to 40 meters/130 feet. I told him that when I returned to America, I would be teaching a class in which I certified students to dive to 100 meters/330 feet. He shook his head in wonder.

 

[Fin Finder]

It started with a couple hits of O2 on a safety stop. I thought, "What's the harm?"

It was all fun at first. Being with the "in crowd" at 200. The subtle buzz of narcosis. Laughing at how our voices sounded on mix. Wearing our masks on backwards, and making fun of the lightweights with their single tanks filled with "ooooh, nitrox".

No one talked about the costs. Helium started to go up, just when I went hypoxic. Before long I was dropping C-notes on the counter at my LDS. They were more than happy to take my money. They could tell I needed to go deep. PO2 Parasites.

A guy I met at the chamber told me about something he called "balloon". Later we scored a t-bottle together on the street. It was dirty, probably cut with other inert gasses, but hell, it was the not-so noble gas I craved. Number two on the periodic charts, but number one in my thoughts. Then he split for High Springs, and I never got my fills. I'd been ripped-off.

I knew it had gone too far when I started injecting argon in my drysuit. I finally said that's enough. It was time to surface from this nightmare. The hardest part was telling my family I had a gas problem. They misunderstood.

I've been off the juice for almost a year now. I tell myself I'm perfectly happy here at 30 feet. Ya, I really like being shallow. Ya, I really like it.
Really.

 

[gekodivebali]

I just came back from a trip to Bali, and in the last week in Tulamben my group of 3 had a DM assigned to us for the boat dives--we did the shore dives on our own. The DM would sometimes include in his briefing that our maximum depth would be "20 meters/80 feet."

Next time you're in Tulamben, you should really try some of the deeper sites: Drop-off, Alamanda, Batu Kelebit and, my personal favorite, Emerald. All these are fairly easy sites with little currents and adequate for deco dives in the 30 to 60m range. Heck, there are even some great deep cleaning stations right in the middle of the bay just a couple hundred meters from the wreck...

 

[boulderjohn]

Next time you're in Tulamben, you should really try some of the deeper sites: Drop-off, Alamanda, Batu Kelebit and, my personal favorite, Emerald.

We did both Drop Off and Emerald. The DM refused to go deeper than 66 feet on either, regardless of how great the stuff deeper than that looked.

 

[Diving Dubai]

We did both Drop Off and Emerald. The DM refused to go deeper than 66 feet on either, regardless of how great the stuff deeper than that looked.

I thought the Drop off was the best dive during our brief stay there. We went down to 45m on all 3 dives there. We did carry ponies and it helps that we know the owner of the centre so had an experienced guide who knew the score. Being below the OW max meant we were away from the majority of divers too

 

[RainPilot]

It started with a couple hits of O2 on a safety stop. I thought, "What's the harm?"

It was all fun at first. Being with the "in crowd" at 200. The subtle buzz of narcosis. Laughing at how our voices sounded on mix. Wearing our masks on backwards, and making fun of the lightweights with their single tanks filled with "ooooh, nitrox".

No one talked about the costs. Helium started to go up, just when I went hypoxic. Before long I was dropping C-notes on the counter at my LDS. They were more than happy to take my money. They could tell I needed to go deep. PO2 Parasites.

A guy I met at the chamber told me about something he called "balloon". Later we scored a t-bottle together on the street. It was dirty, probably cut with other inert gasses, but hell, it was the not-so noble gas I craved. Number two on the periodic charts, but number one in my thoughts. Then he split for High Springs, and I never got my fills. I'd been ripped-off.

I knew it had gone too far when I started injecting argon in my drysuit. I finally said that's enough. It was time to surface from this nightmare. The hardest part was telling my family I had a gas problem. They misunderstood.

I've been off the juice for almost a year now. I tell myself I'm perfectly happy here at 30 feet. Ya, I really like being shallow. Ya, I really like it.
Really.

Greatest. Post. Ever.

#NitroxIsAGatewayGas.