Do you listen to the Voice?

[do it easy]

This is the voice that tells you not to dive. It's a hunch or intuition that it's not your day to be diving. Supposedly, it is the little light that goes off in your head to warn you of danger. I did one dive where I essentially ignored the voice, and I had another experience where I heard it loud and clear.

Earlier this year, I went on a cave dive that would stretch my training and experience. We had planned this trip for a while, and in the weeks before the trip, I was having second thoughts about whether I was ready for the dive. I thought about all the ways that it could go wrong. My worry peaked during breakfast, and on the way to the site, I had nervous butterflies and knots in my stomach. I had never been that worried about a dive before, but I tried to not let it show. As soon as we pulled up to the sight and I started getting my gear ready, the nervousness was gone and I was all green lights. The dive was uneventful. What confuses me is that if there was ever a dive that I was going to thumb, this would be the one, yet I completely ignored the nervousness, the fear of dying, and everything else that told me to call the dive before it started.

The other day, I was home in my kitchen, when I heard a noise like my neighbor dropped something (I live in a condo with shared walls). I was about to disregard it, but something struck me as odd, and I felt like something was urgently wrong. I ran to the water meter and I could see that the dial was spinning but I knew that I wasn't using the water. I shut it down and looked around the house. A pipe had frozen and burst in my bathroom. Luckily I had caught it just as it happened, so it wasn't a big mess. I'm not sure what set me off, I just had a feeling that something was wrong. There was never a rational thought in my mind that it was below freezing outside and maybe I burst a pipe, but my first reaction was to check the water meter. Maybe, subconsciously, the sound of the water rushing through the pipes bothered me?

The burst pipe isn't as potentially dangerous as diving, but what I can't explain was why one circumstance was direly urgent, while the other was just uncomfortable. It seems like it should be the other way around and I should be less concerned about a burst pipe than the most challenging dive I've done so far.

Does anyone have any insight or similar experiences?

 

[onfloat]

You only hear one voice?

 

[Spady]

That's really creepy. Honestly I've never heard 'the voice' with regards to diving. Probably because I'm just a recreational diver and haven't (yet) ventured into specialty diving. Recreational nitrox is as hard core as I get.
I totally know what you're talking about, though. I've experienced it before on other occasions. I believe its also known as instinct, you're gut, intuition, and many others.

 

[Lead_carrier]

That's really creepy. Honestly I've never heard 'the voice' with regards to diving. Probably because I'm just a recreational diver and haven't (yet) ventured into specialty diving. Recreational nitrox is as hard core as I get.
I totally know what you're talking about, though. I've experienced it before on other occasions. I believe its also known as instinct, you're gut, intuition, and many others.

I heard it the first time on a trip to the Florida Keys and canned the dive just before I was about to set up my equipment. A rouge wave hit the boat, took the bow ,dipped it under the mooring bouy and ripped off the railing and the pulpit. I definitely pay attention to it now.

 

[do it easy]

I heard it the first time on a trip to the Florida Keys and canned the dive just before I was about to set up my equipment. A rouge wave hit the boat, took the bow ,dipped it under the mooring bouy and ripped off the railing and the pulpit. I definitely pay attention to it now.

Where conditions dicey to start with or was the rogue wave completely out of the blue?

 

[offroaddiver]

i've had the feelings and scrubbed dives and trips. Been really glad i've done it too.

 

[loosebits]

Yep, I've heard the voice and a couple of times I ignored it and a couple of times I didn't. Now that I'm a little more experienced, I am less likely to ignore it. There's nothing in those holes worth dying for and if you're hearing the voice, you're not having fun.. just turn the dive. Of course it's a lot easier when you have a regular team.

 

[drbill]

Yes, I hear "the voice" on occasion. It rarely tells me not to dive, but it does tell me to turn this way or avoid that direction.

It also seems to direct me towards things I can film underwater like the day "the voice" or some other cue told me to stop filming the lobster and turn around... just in time to see and film a pair of bat rays "flying united" through the water.

At times I think it is my grandmother as she was closest to me. My shrink tells me it's just my whacked out brain chemistry. Not sure who is correct.

 

[Diver Dennis]

A few weeks ago in Mexico we were doing an advanced dive at a small group of islands. There was a big swell and we talked about stating away from the rocks around these two pinnacles rising about 50' out of the water, that were separated by a space of about 6' and had maybe a 15' swell going through them, up and down. I was behind the small group and taking a few shots but the water was pretty green and I was keeping up with the group. We had come around the backside of the formation, about 30' deep when one of the group veers off toward the clearly white water surging between the two pinnacles. They were diving as a group and weren't buddied up as such and the other divers didn't see her leave. I did a WT* and took off after her. As we entered the white water full of bubbles my mind was saying "Danger, Danger..." Now about a month ago there was a thread here about riding a panicked buddy to the surface and I stepped up and said that I would be the guy who would rip the reg out before we hit the surface. Well, I was wrong. I knew I shouldn't be going in there but I could almost reach her now... Then the surge grabbed me as her fins disappeared into a blizzard of bubbles.

It was one of those slow motion moments as I felt the water trying to rip my arm holding the camera off as it smashed into one side of the narrow opening, with the rocks very close to me on each side. It felt like riding a bull as I was pulled back down into what must have been an eddy between the entrance and exit. I looked up and saw it was brighter up there but there were too many bubbles to see the surface. I pulled my arm in, swearing because I knew I had scratched my dome port again and I still heard the voice. It sounded like the robot from "Lost in Space". Remember? "Danger, Will Robinson, Danger..." I didn't panic at all and was starting to think about how the hell I was going to get out of there when the next swell came in. I cradled the camera and pulled in my legs. I was expecting to run face first into one of the walls but it didn't happen, the water seemed to cushion me against the sides. When the water subsided a bit, I tried to swim down to get out of the worst surge but I was swept up and rolled around again.

I was starting to worry after the fourth and fifth swell came in, I was making no headway at all. For some reason the next rush of water was different, I think it was the next one and I made it down deep enough and the bubbles started to clear. I was able to swim out, where I found the other diver waiting. She was washed through in the first swell. The voice was gone now .

She signaled to me asking if I was OK and except for a cut hand I was, so I gave her the thumb. I was suddenly very cold and wanted to get back on the boat. When we surfaced she immediately said, "I'm sorry, I know, I know..." She was on the verge of tears and that's all we said. It was a long, quiet ride in.

 

[Bryan]

"The voice" has saved me more than a couple of times.

"The voice" becomes harder to trust the more paranoid one becomes, I've learned.