Oooooookay Marie13... Well here's the long loooooong version which I originally posted on a friend's spearfishing site shortly after the trip. Moderators, if this is too far off subject and to long winded, please feel free to move or delete as you see fit.
"....Swell continued to build the next day so after spending the night at the anchorage near the landing we made one dive in the morning in the lee of Sutil and then worked back around the island trying to stay out of the swell as much as possible. I really struggled to find any bugs and as night approached I had only three for my efforts. Since it was the last of our time at Santa Barbara, we opted again for a night dive. This time I think only 8 or 9 guys wanted to go in.
We set up just north of the landing and I bee lined it for the shallows again. I headed toward the landing knowing there were a couple of good overhangs and caves that way. The swell didn’t seem all that bad but as I made my way along the shore, things started silting up heavily. As I was cruising under the overhang it really closed in. I grew up diving in near zero vis and am very comfortable at night, but I started getting a little creeped out. I just had this feeling that something wasn’t quite right. And then I ran into the back of the cave. WTH? I was super shallow and there was still a little surge so this one had to have an air pocket or pass through. I surfaced and sure as **** I was in a long tunnel with a blow hole at the end. I maintained my orientation, went back to the bottom and followed the same wall out that I had followed in. No screwing around in there looking cockroaches for this dude!
When I got back out to the sand and 20ft of water I surfaced, took a bearing to the boat, cut the angle for the shore directly behind the boat and kicked over. My navigation was good and I hit the wall again right where the stern anchor was lying on the bottom. Vis bumped back up to 30ft or so and I relaxed a little. Just then I spotted another diver. Just seeing another guy in the water settled my nerves completely and I shed all of that creepiness I picked up in the murk.
I followed along behind and to his left picking through the boulders to the left while he worked to the right. As we went along, we got hit with a pretty gnarly surge. I saw then that he had a wall to his right and I had one to my left. I figured we were in one of the many canyons along the shore. Then the life disappeared. No vegetation or soft coral. We were in a cave. No big deal. It was huge, vis was good and the surge was totally manageable. Again, with that much surge in a cave, I figured it was either a tunnel or at least had some sort of exit. Closed off caves surge a little, but not the kind of flow we were getting.
Suddenly, ahead of the other guy, I see a dive light. Cool, another diver. No, that light is lying on the bottom. WTH? How do you lose a lighted dive light, at night in gin clear water?? Earlier in the day I found a dropped lobster bag, and a gauge, and my own scallop iron. I was the king of finding everything but bugs I thought! Then we got closer. Dive light… weight belt… Mask and snorkel… Integrated BC weights…. Oh ****, Oh ****, Oh ****, Oh ****, Oh ****! The diver turned around and gave me the WTH shrug. I gave it back and he spun around heading further into the cave. Like I said, there was a ton of flow so we both assumed that there was a pass through. I started to follow until I did the math. 40lb weight belt, two five pound integrated weights? The diver that dropped that in 10ft of water while wearing a 7mm scuba suit went only one way. UP. My heart sunk. I slowly looked up fearing the absolute worst. The only reason I could possibly think of dropping weight would be an absolute air emergency. I was praying not to see a dead diver on the ceiling of the cave. Then, the surface of the water! An air pocket!! I popped up and heard the most desperate screaming I’ve ever heard!
“I’m here! I’m here! I’m right here! It’s Mike! I’m right here!!!” I shined my light up and there was a diver six feet out of the water clinging to the rocks for dear life! He immediately said he was OK and that he had his reg and a plenty of air but he lost everything else and couldn’t submerge. It was between sets and pretty calm so I asked if he wanted me to get his gear and help him down? He said no, please go get help. I said it’s only ten ft deep, I can get your stuff, are you sure? Just then a set rolled through and filled the cavern up to where I was eye level with him! I said “OK, I’m going to get help! Stay calm, I know where we are, we’ll be back to get you. It may take a little bit but we are going to get you!” He said ok and down I went. I didn’t see the other diver so I assumed he had gone through a pass through and was on the other side. I retraced my entry, popped up and frantically signaled the boat with my light. Between me and the boat was a small section of exposed reef so to them, I looked like a diver stuck high and dry. A crew member jumped on a boogie board and no **** skipped across the water to get to me. He was hauling ass! We he got there I explained what was up and that I would stay while he went to get a tank. He yelled instructions as he got back to the boat and they grabbed gear and loaded it and him into the RIB and came rushing back.
He jumped in with a rescue line in hand and I went over the layout of the cave with him and where Mike was. He followed me in and when we were under Mike, I signaled that I would wait on the bottom. He gave me the OK, grabbed Mike’s mask and surfaced. Just then, another weight belt sunk to the bottom in front of me!! I was like WTH is he thinking!!! I grabbed it and it must have had 50lbs on it! I stood on the bottom trying to hold it over my head in the surge just as the crew member came back down. I was like WTH? He signaled me to the surface and when I popped up he says “you didn’t tell me there were two in here!” All I could say was “there weren’t when I left!!!” He told me to go down and back out because they were jumping in and were going to pull along the line to get out. I backed out of the cave pulling the line down out of the cracks and watched as Zip(the diver who I followed into the cave) and then the crew member and Mike worked their way out. We all surfaced and worked over to the RIB. The RIB had fouled her prop on lobster pot so we ended up helping them back to the boat and then climbed aboard to cheers hugs and handshakes.
Just like the day before, the crew acted with calm and cool professionalism. They did a tremendous job.
OK, so what happened you ask? When I talked to Mike, he said that he hadn’t realized that he had stumbled into a cave until he got surge blasted. It rolled him bad and his mask was sucked off of his face. Somehow in the scramble to catch the bottom he lost his light. Totally and completely disoriented he ended up on the surface where only then he realized he was in a cave. He tried to dive down and grab his light between sets but once under water in the clear with no mask, everything was a glowing blur. He surfaced again as a set came through and he was shot high into the vault and panicked and grabbed on to the rocks. Battered against the ceiling he did not want to go back into the water so he dropped his belt and integrated weights and wedged himself into the crack. Every set brought a wave or two that filled the entire space. Luckily he had plenty of air.
He knew wasn’t going to die right away, but in the dark, in a 7mm suit there was no way he was getting out without his mask and weight without help. When he saw my and Zip’s light below him, he really panicked thinking that we may not look up. That’s why when I initially surfaced he was screaming so desperately.
He didn’t want me to try to help because the set surges filled the whole cave. That was smart of him and I’m glad I listened. Without a line or his weight, even with his mask, I doubt he could have gotten out. The only way for me to get his weights up would have been to fully inflate my BC which would have put me in real danger of getting slammed to the ceiling in a set and getting knocked out or worse.
So what about the other guy? Well, Zip followed the cave to its eventual terminus. It came to a thin crack opening to the sea on the bottom and at the surface a blow hole. He almost got stuck there, pinned by the flow during a set. Turning around, he got back to Mike’s gear and finally did the math realizing that Mike could only have gone up. He surfaced in the middle of a set and was immediately jammed to the ceiling only to be dropped back into the whiteout. That was about when the crew member and I were entering the cave. He panicked and on the next wave, clung to the rocks like Mike did. Fearing getting dragged back in he also ditched his weights!!! Bad move! Now they were both stuck and Brandon(the crew member) was totally confused upon finding two guys up there! Thank goodness for a well-trained crew. I doubt either of those guys will enter a cave, day or night, again. And I doubt either will do a near shore dive, even if it’s flat calm.
That ended the diving at Santa Barbara. We crossed over to northern channel islands during the night. I sat alone in the Galley until about 1am. What if I hadn’t turned around upon being greeted by silted up water? I actually had contemplated not doing the dive at all. What if I hadn’t gone in? What if I had just said screw it when I got out of the silt and headed back to the boat? It still weighs on my mind right now.
If you made it through all of my ramblings, thank you for taking the time."
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