I thought I'd post the story of a dive that didn't go very well, although there was no risk of anybody getting hurt on it.
This was on San Miguel Island last weekend. The weather wasn't very good, and there was some pretty strong wind. The surface had small swells (I believe the crew said 3-4 feet) and some chop. We were warned that it appeared that there was a little bit of current, but we chose to dive without our scooters anyway (first mistake).
We went out the bow door directly onto the bow anchor line, as instructed. We descended along the line, and didn't have too much trouble staying with it until it got into the kelp. This was the same point where it changed to chain. We swam around a big clump of kelp and when we got to the other side, the chain was nowhere to be seen. I was really quite confused and tried to reacquire it, but we could see the bottom so we just went on down (second mistake).
I should mention that the kelp we saw was lying almost horizontal. We felt the current, but it didn't seem that bad (third mistake).
We got down to the structure at about 97 feet, and immediately moved shallower -- but we couldn't find any direction where things really sloped up, and the shallowest we got was 87 feet. We were working really hard against the current, and trying to find someplace to shelter from it, but weren't having much luck.
I got my wetnotes out and wrote to Peter, "Anchor is in 65 feet, move up against current and drift down on it?" And he concurred. (Turned out the anchor was in 85 feet -- I'm still not sure if I misheard the briefing, or if it was wrong.) But we couldn't find anyplace that got shallower, so after two or three minutes, Peter just threw the thumb. We abandoned our attempts to stay in position and began to ascend, shooting a bag as we went.
When we surfaced, we were quite a long way downcurrent from the boat, but we could see them and they had seen our bag. They sent the skiff for us and recovery was uneventful.
Lessons learned:
When you are going down the anchor line and the kelp is lying sideways, you should go back UP the anchor line.
If you lose the anchor line on descent, there's a reason and it's probably not anything good.
If you don't know where the anchor is lying, it's difficult to find it on retreat. (Believe me, I went down and verified anchor position on EVERY subsequent dive!)
Recognizing that conditions are beyond you early on means you're more likely to come up where the boat can see you.
Shooting a bag immediately on abandoning the dive also ensured that a) they'd know they had a team in trouble and b) they'd know where we were.
BTW, all teams that attempted this dive without scooters got blown off and had to be picked up. Sometimes the ocean just doesn't want you there!
This was on San Miguel Island last weekend. The weather wasn't very good, and there was some pretty strong wind. The surface had small swells (I believe the crew said 3-4 feet) and some chop. We were warned that it appeared that there was a little bit of current, but we chose to dive without our scooters anyway (first mistake).
We went out the bow door directly onto the bow anchor line, as instructed. We descended along the line, and didn't have too much trouble staying with it until it got into the kelp. This was the same point where it changed to chain. We swam around a big clump of kelp and when we got to the other side, the chain was nowhere to be seen. I was really quite confused and tried to reacquire it, but we could see the bottom so we just went on down (second mistake).
I should mention that the kelp we saw was lying almost horizontal. We felt the current, but it didn't seem that bad (third mistake).
We got down to the structure at about 97 feet, and immediately moved shallower -- but we couldn't find any direction where things really sloped up, and the shallowest we got was 87 feet. We were working really hard against the current, and trying to find someplace to shelter from it, but weren't having much luck.
I got my wetnotes out and wrote to Peter, "Anchor is in 65 feet, move up against current and drift down on it?" And he concurred. (Turned out the anchor was in 85 feet -- I'm still not sure if I misheard the briefing, or if it was wrong.) But we couldn't find anyplace that got shallower, so after two or three minutes, Peter just threw the thumb. We abandoned our attempts to stay in position and began to ascend, shooting a bag as we went.
When we surfaced, we were quite a long way downcurrent from the boat, but we could see them and they had seen our bag. They sent the skiff for us and recovery was uneventful.
Lessons learned:
When you are going down the anchor line and the kelp is lying sideways, you should go back UP the anchor line.
If you lose the anchor line on descent, there's a reason and it's probably not anything good.
If you don't know where the anchor is lying, it's difficult to find it on retreat. (Believe me, I went down and verified anchor position on EVERY subsequent dive!)
Recognizing that conditions are beyond you early on means you're more likely to come up where the boat can see you.
Shooting a bag immediately on abandoning the dive also ensured that a) they'd know they had a team in trouble and b) they'd know where we were.
BTW, all teams that attempted this dive without scooters got blown off and had to be picked up. Sometimes the ocean just doesn't want you there!
