"Bottom" three diving experiences

[Guba]

This goes along with another thread that has been posted recently. (Top three diving experiences)

Things can't always be rosey, of course, so what were your LEAST enjoyable dive experiences? Sorry to rain on anyone's parade with the negative thoughts, but bad experiences, as unpleasant as they may be, are often times the ones that teach us the most. So what diving experiences rank at the bottom of your list? If you are so inclined, share what you learned from them.

 

[Scottri]

My least favorite:

1.) Fish Lake in northern Indiana. Nothing but mud. It took me days to get the silt out of my gear.
2.) Oysterville Washington. 0 vis, shallow and BORING!
3.) Any number of lakes in the mid-west. Shallow, boring and crappy vis.

 

[jpsexton]

I have really only had one bad diving experience.

It was my last checkout dive of OW certs. I had been overweighted during checkouts and decided I would shed some weight on the last dive. In the process I wound up with uneven weights and spent the whole dive trying to not swim sideways the whole time not really understanding what the hell was wrong.

This was a good learning experience for me though. I learned how important weighting and bouyancy were. Imediately after my first dive with my new weight integrated BC I also learned that weight belts are an evil design of the devil.

 

[Matt19380]

My first OW dive after being certified. I'm on vacation at one of those well-known all-inclusive resorts in Jamiaca. It offered free dives. How could I say no? This first dive was touted as being "easy" and shallow. Perfect!

There is a dive master leading me and a second diver. We dive off a boat which pulled away from the area after we splashed. We follow the DM along the sandy bottom until we reach a large coral outcropping. It was an amazing thing to see. It was like a coral "building" that stretched up about 30 feet out of the sand. There was a split in the coral which made hallway\maze type passage through the coral structure.

It wasn't an overhead structure but, I still felt very uncomfortable entering it. I signaled to DM that I didn't want to go in. He went in, and diver #2 followed him. He turned and signaled me to follow him. I said no. He signaled me to follow a 3rd time, turned and went into the structure. I'm now alone on my 5th ever dive, no dive boat in sight. I decide to follow.

The hallway becomes more narrow as we travel through the maze. Slowly, the open area overhead begins to close until the breaks in the overhead coral are only a few inches across. I want to turn around but am not sure how to exit this structure.

We finally reach a very small room in the structure. All 3 of us a jammed into it. There is a dark, small (and I mean SMALL) tunnel leading out of the room. It's about 7 feet long. DM points to the tunnel and proceeds to swim into it. Diver #2 and I are left in theis claustrophobically small room. He turns his body toward the tunnel and manages to knock the reg out of my mouth. I recover it but am now in full-out panic mode. I wanted to jump straight out of my skin. Diver #2 swims through the tunnel. Great, it is silted out and I am alone in this room. Finally, I chose to swim through. My BC scraped the sandy bottom and my tank knocked the coral top of the tunnel as I passed through. On the other side I found the most beautiful site I had seen through the entire dive - open water.

I aborted the dive and began my ascent. The DM and diver #2 finished the dive. On the surface the dive master gave me a hard time for "losing my cool."

My mistake was allowing the DM to pressure me into doing something I wasn't comfortable doing. The one positive take away is that I now have the confidence to abort any dive.

 

[Fish_Whisperer]

1. Returning from Cozumel in April, after diving 84F water, 80'+ viz, to hook up with my dive buddy and hit Martha's Quarry, with 45F water and less than 8' viz, and highly aggressive bluegill. It was a rude awakening!

2. My first shore dive was done in Cozumel, before Wilma hit. The waves were 3-4', not too bad, and getting in and going out wasn't bad. (This was only like my 7th or 8th dive....) Coming back in though, was horrible. The waves were just log-rolling all of us around, all over the sand.... All of us were laughing so hard, we couldn't have stood up anyway....

3. My last day of diving in Cozumel. The diving itself, was WONDERFUL!! But it was one of those days when I became Murphy's Special Friend, and every possible thing that could go wrong, the whole day, DID! The only time things were RIGHT, is when I was underwater. God, that day SUCKED. LOL

A small sample: I fell down the front steps, the O-ring blew on my tank, my dry-bag (open) blew into the water, one of my hoses developed a terrible leak, I dropped my mask and lost it on the first dive, (which was also the first dive with that mask!), and there were lots of other things that happened too, but those were just the "highlights." LOL

 

[wardric]

1) Black river, inspection of a structure (bridge) in 0 viz (litteraly) and smelly sewage effluent upstream :11:

2) following a bad buddy (to save his azz) that was swimming down after a big rock that some stupid guy had pushed in the water on a wall (quarry). We went 126 ft and came back up for a very short dive. (my last one with that guy)

3)Knowlton Landing pier, lake Memphremagog. very flat and muddy and low viz and cold and boring

 

[TSandM]

1. The day I tried to get into the water with my drysuit unzipped.

2. The day I was trying to get the weighting right on the Al80s I'd been given, and made several trips to shore to get more weight, and eventually had the hose come off my second stage and had to call the dive and let my buddies go without me.

3. The day I took my new dry suit into the water and discovered that the only way I could vent it was lying on my back -- AFTER two uncontrolled ascents that occurred because I hadn't figured it out yet.

Mostly, the worst dives are the ones I don't get to do. Even a boring dive is, after all, a dive!

 

[H2Andy]

1. off Key Largo, in 6 to 8 foot seas ... first dive more or less ok ... came out of the water ... hurl time ... hurl time .... hurl time ... wanted to die ... Marvel was chain-smoking next to me ... thanks, PAL!

2. off St. Augustine in 4 to 6 seas. get in water, make it to anchor line. i felt
awful. hurled. felt weak, about to pass out. let myself drift back with the current,
got into boat, spent rest of dive on my stomach, hurling out the back. actually managed to get the last two dives in, once the seas calmed down.

3. (see a pattern here?) off Jacksonville, 4 to 6 seas. did the first dive more or less ok. came up. hurled. hurled. hurled. hurled. went up front, laid down and tried
to die until we made it back to shore.

 

[Cacia]

1. Jellyfish lake

2. Jellyfish lake

3. Jellyfish lake

:voskl1:

 

[JeffG]

1. Jellyfish lake

2. Jellyfish lake

3. Jellyfish lake

You would think you would of figured it out after dive 2 at least.