jerrydascorpion
Registered
Let me start by saying I am a new diver. This would have been both my wife's and my own 10th dive.
We rented gear from our local shop and were going to dive a local quarry to try to get a bit deeper than we have gone before. The quarries that the park allows diving in only get to 60 feet or so.
We thought that this would be a great place to work on skills and to try to get a little deeper of a dive. It sounded like a big outdoor swimming pool. The diving quarries were maybe 150 to 200 feet across at the widest point. We figured that there can't be much current, and looking into the water you could see rock spoil piles all over, so the visibility must be decent.
I have pretty bad seasonal allergies, so I thought I would take a Sudafed before we dive to try to clear my stuffy nose a bit. I never took Sudafed before, but my wife would take it every so often to relief some sinus pressure (even while not diving). I figured what could it harm, we were not planning on doing long dives, so if it started to wear off we could be done diving. I took the Sudafed maybe an hour before we got to the dive site.
After hiking in maybe the half mile with all our gear, we get to the first quarry. As I am getting in my wetsuit, I feel what seems like my nose running. I wipe my nose with my hand and see a decent amount of blood. I do get bloody noses somewhat frequently (a few times a year), and this one was not bad compared to others I have had.
I sit down and tend to my nose to get the bleeding to stop, as my wife sets up our gear.
By the time everything is setup, my nose has pretty much stopped bleeding. My wife enters the water first, and I hand her all of her gear. I then hand her my gear and I enter the water.
We both are all geared up and do our pre dive brief to discuss what we are going to accomplish, our hand signals, our ascent plan, and at what air amount we will start to surface at.
We swim on the surface away from where we entered the quarry being we kicked up some sediment while entering and getting our gear on. We start our descent, and realize that the visibility is around 8 feet at best. It wasn't the end of the world, but not what we were expecting. We surface, and talk about our dive plan again, and decide to head to the shallower side of the quarry and explore some rock piles to see if we can find any fish. We dive around for a few more minutes, and I want to check on my nose to make sure the bleeding is not starting again after all the equalizing I have been doing.
On the surface, I find that my nose has started bleeding again, and we talk about calling the dive or waiting to stop it again. After a few minutes of floating and hanging out on the surface, I got a nauseated feeling. It felt like I had too much caffeine on an empty stomach. I did eat breakfast and some snacks before the dive.
We exited the quarry and broke our gear down. We thought about getting lunch and trying again. We decided it was not work the risk to try again.
We did get about 15 minutes of diving to max depth of maybe 15 feet.
It was not fun making the decision to call the dive after renting all the gear and using only a couple hundred pounds of air, but it was the right choice.
We did learn a lot from our short dive though. It was a great refresher on setup and use of gear, we put our gear on in the water, discussed our dive plan and when something changed that was not in the plan we modified our plan, we were able to practice some basic skills, and it was our first dive with just the two of us. I also learned not to take Sudafed, I do not think I will take it again even if I am not diving.
I am also glad that we had to call a dive that was only a local quarry dive, and not out on a boat in a tropical destination.
It was a very humbling experience, and it was probably the most informative 15 minute dive we have done.
We look forward to the next dive we can do.
We rented gear from our local shop and were going to dive a local quarry to try to get a bit deeper than we have gone before. The quarries that the park allows diving in only get to 60 feet or so.
We thought that this would be a great place to work on skills and to try to get a little deeper of a dive. It sounded like a big outdoor swimming pool. The diving quarries were maybe 150 to 200 feet across at the widest point. We figured that there can't be much current, and looking into the water you could see rock spoil piles all over, so the visibility must be decent.
I have pretty bad seasonal allergies, so I thought I would take a Sudafed before we dive to try to clear my stuffy nose a bit. I never took Sudafed before, but my wife would take it every so often to relief some sinus pressure (even while not diving). I figured what could it harm, we were not planning on doing long dives, so if it started to wear off we could be done diving. I took the Sudafed maybe an hour before we got to the dive site.
After hiking in maybe the half mile with all our gear, we get to the first quarry. As I am getting in my wetsuit, I feel what seems like my nose running. I wipe my nose with my hand and see a decent amount of blood. I do get bloody noses somewhat frequently (a few times a year), and this one was not bad compared to others I have had.
I sit down and tend to my nose to get the bleeding to stop, as my wife sets up our gear.
By the time everything is setup, my nose has pretty much stopped bleeding. My wife enters the water first, and I hand her all of her gear. I then hand her my gear and I enter the water.
We both are all geared up and do our pre dive brief to discuss what we are going to accomplish, our hand signals, our ascent plan, and at what air amount we will start to surface at.
We swim on the surface away from where we entered the quarry being we kicked up some sediment while entering and getting our gear on. We start our descent, and realize that the visibility is around 8 feet at best. It wasn't the end of the world, but not what we were expecting. We surface, and talk about our dive plan again, and decide to head to the shallower side of the quarry and explore some rock piles to see if we can find any fish. We dive around for a few more minutes, and I want to check on my nose to make sure the bleeding is not starting again after all the equalizing I have been doing.
On the surface, I find that my nose has started bleeding again, and we talk about calling the dive or waiting to stop it again. After a few minutes of floating and hanging out on the surface, I got a nauseated feeling. It felt like I had too much caffeine on an empty stomach. I did eat breakfast and some snacks before the dive.
We exited the quarry and broke our gear down. We thought about getting lunch and trying again. We decided it was not work the risk to try again.
We did get about 15 minutes of diving to max depth of maybe 15 feet.
It was not fun making the decision to call the dive after renting all the gear and using only a couple hundred pounds of air, but it was the right choice.
We did learn a lot from our short dive though. It was a great refresher on setup and use of gear, we put our gear on in the water, discussed our dive plan and when something changed that was not in the plan we modified our plan, we were able to practice some basic skills, and it was our first dive with just the two of us. I also learned not to take Sudafed, I do not think I will take it again even if I am not diving.
I am also glad that we had to call a dive that was only a local quarry dive, and not out on a boat in a tropical destination.
It was a very humbling experience, and it was probably the most informative 15 minute dive we have done.
We look forward to the next dive we can do.