Mildly regretting a dive?

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The one where I forgot to remove hearing aid before splash?...

I've always been afraid I would do this, an expensive mistake. I generally wear a pair of older backup hearing aids on the boat and almost always remember to put them in the desiccator jar before gearing up. I few times I've started to gear up before remembering. Once, I was all geared up and ready to stand up before I realized I could hear a little too well, almost too late :)
 
I regret a couple of dives.

Number 1 was a 22 minute shore dive to a maximum depth of 11m during which I blasted through 160 BAR of air. Why so bad? It was a group outing where a number of tanks were brought for the entire group - you grabbed one (the vans were parked about 20-30m from the shore up a slight slope), dived it and returned it to the used pile, grabbed another for the next dive etc. My problem was that after my first dive that day I grabbed another tank without checking it (it had an adaptor to allow yoke regs) so I grabbed a hex and tried to remove it to find that it was bound tight. Took the tank back, grabbed another and connected my regs, turned it on and heard air escape. Tried redoing it, getting someone else to do it and an instructor but eventually found that someone had bashed the valve out of shape so it would never seal. Took that tank back and got another one that did actually work. Only issue was by this point I was stressed out and tired from lugging so many tanks about so it took me about 10 minutes in the water to relax by which time I had blasted through most of my available gas.

Number 2 was a couple of weeks ago where, due to circumstances, I was separated from the group on the way to the site (2hr drive) and ended up in a different location which involves a 30-40min drive back the way I came. Then got to the site, unloaded the car to find the site was down a slope that started muddy and ended up with smooth stone. Turns out that is not a very good combination so I fell twice taking my gear down. Got geared up (new drysuit and new weight harness so weighting was shot to hell - think I was probably a good bit over weighted @18kg+3kg BP) and then made a hash of controlling my buoyancy in the new drysuit (also almost lost a fin due to the spring straps being too loose and getting too much air in my feet). Ended up with 28mins with a max depth of 20m which is a good bit less than I normally would have had.

Gained quite a bit of experience from both though -check tanks before taking them to my gear, do not allow myself to feel hurried, minimise the number of new bits of gear per dive and be careful about dive sites
 
I don't think I've ever "mildly" regretted a dive. At least I was wet and if something went mildly wrong I learned something. There's been a few I seriously regretted and wished I were not in the water - the ones that come to mind all involved nutty currents, stuff I couldn't really swim or crawl against but had to. Not a fan of that.
 
I have regretted driving 2 hours to Monterey/Carmel and seeing that conditions or viz were really bad. However, once Ive already made the drive, I don't really regret doing the dive - I'm already there, may as well dive, as long as its safe. So, for example, I don't regret a dive I made into ~ 1' viz ( a local boat dive) -- since I had already paid for it, traveled there etc. At least I had the experience of terminating the dive once I saw the crap viz and safely ascending from ~ 60'

I do regret one dive I did - a Bull Shark dive in Playa del Carmen that involved chumming -- as I really don't agree with chumming.

I didn't plan on doing a Bull Shark dive. I had arranged to do an unspecified type dive with a small operator. When I got there, they said that the other diver had come from Coz to specifically do the Bull Shark dive. I knew right then & there that I didn't really agree with chumming, but it was my only opportunity to dive in PDC (my wife is a non-diver) and I didn't want to risk not being able to dive that morning.

I now regret participating in the dive and will make sure that all my future dives have reasonably minimal ecological impact.

Moreover, by the end of the dive I was bored of kneeling in the featureless sand, and thought the Bulls acted a bit like trained circus animals.
 
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I’ve never regretted a dive,though I’ve question my enthusiastic diving Schedule after being fatigued after a week or two of no stop boat diving.
 
Once, when we were newbies stuck in the newbie group, we sat in the sand by the anchor line waiting for the guide to come back for 20 minutes because he had to surface to help some other newbie equalize. After that we no longer self identified as newbies.
 
I forgot about the half dozen or so that had unexpected strong currents. I regretted the situation, but usually not the rest of the dive. As with Damselfish, I guess these were learning experiences. I had practise in "stop, think, act"--well, don't "stop" too long.
 
Wow, thank's for the story. Being a newer diver myself, I'm yet to experience an emergency like this actually happen.

Why do you think he refused to dump some weight (aside from being an idiot)? Did he panic and become completely irrational; or did he not see what happened as a life threatening situation once he got his mask/fins and just didn't want to abandon some of his precious lead?
I never did figure out why he wouldn't drop some of his lead. I told him via my slate that I would hold onto him after we both vented our BC's so he wouldn't float away but he just very adamantly shook his head no. He had looked at his gauge so he knew that he had already used quite a bit of his air. His tank was totally empty before we got to the boat. If I hadn't of been there for him to hold onto, he would have drowned. He almost did anyway. I popped a pencil flare and blew my whistle to get my girlfriend to come get us because there was no way I could keep him afloat and swim at the same time. Once in the boat, I demanded to know why he didn't dump some of his lead. He just shook his head and didn't answer. He had always seemed like a decent diver but got seasick and tossed his cookies every single trip out and again on the way in. That was irritating enough but this incident finally made me fire him as a dive partner. Both of our girlfriends were divers and gave him heck about it once I explained what had happened. My girlfriend wanted to wrap his lead around his head and dump him overboard. I never dove with him again after that.
 
Yes as I think back there were 2 dives I wish I had never taken. #1 in cozumel, after 1 hour of searching found our dive boat then after leaving the dock they realized they had forgotten the dive master.....went back and then it was a sloooooow boat, people on shore walked faster than we went, horrible vis and then they wanted a tip. #2 tried a boat dive in Bonaire, was told by dive master he never saw a reason to dive below 40 ft and ended up at 8 ft for over 1 hour as he looked for a frog fish. We called the dive.
 
Number 1 was a 22 minute shore dive to a maximum depth of 11m during which I blasted through 160 BAR of air. Why so bad? It was a group outing where a number of tanks were brought for the entire group - you grabbed one (the vans were parked about 20-30m from the shore up a slight slope), dived it and returned it to the used pile, grabbed another for the next dive etc. My problem was that after my first dive that day I grabbed another tank without checking it (it had an adaptor to allow yoke regs) so I grabbed a hex and tried to remove it to find that it was bound tight. Took the tank back, grabbed another and connected my regs, turned it on and heard air escape. Tried redoing it, getting someone else to do it and an instructor but eventually found that someone had bashed the valve out of shape so it would never seal. Took that tank back and got another one that did actually work. Only issue was by this point I was stressed out and tired from lugging so many tanks about so it took me about 10 minutes in the water to relax by which time I had blasted through most of my available gas.

Gained quite a bit of experience
Never regretted a dive, out of my VAST dive count.....had some dives that were not great, but never regretted them, since I learned from each one.
 
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