Challenges in your first 100 dives?

[azstinger11]

While we showed up before thwe charter left, we weren’t early like we normally try to be. This meant gear assembly while underway versus at the dock. I had gotten my BCD situated was getting my first stage on the tank. So I gleefully spin the yoke screw only to watch it totally come undone and bounce into the ocean. Luckily the boat had a parts box and contained one that fit.

 

[chillyinCanada]

Wow wow wow. Those last 3 stories were . . .yikes

Bill, same thing happened to me with regard to fishing line on my first stage on a night dive. Only, I didn't know what the problem was nor did my buddy. He was waiting for me to work out my buoyancy. I was stuck fast on the muddy bottom. Thank heavens a dm came by and cut me loose or I might be there still with fully inflated bcd. Strangest sensation ever. I just kept telling myself that I had lots of air and so plenty of time to work out the problem. Not sure I would have worked it though, thank heavens for that dm losing his group. He got in trouble after the dive but not from me, that's for sure!

 

[clownfishsydney]

It is almost 30 years and over 4,000 dives ago so a bit hard to recall any real "events" in the first 100 dives, but on my 27th dive on a shipwreck called SS Empire Gladstone on the Far South Coast of New South Wales I had the misfortune to dive with "experienced Advanced" divers from Melbourne. One of them in particular, was a problem. He had a new fangled air integrated dive computer and it started beeping at him. When he showed it to me, I noticed that it was saying he had less than 3 minutes of air left. However, I also noticed that he had well over 600 psi of air and we were in under 30 feet of water, so I considered that it was not a great problem. However, he did and he started to panic and wanted to immediately ascend even though we were nowhere near the dive boat's mooring. In the end I had to calm him down and ascend where we were and then swim back on the surface. To make matters worse, he then dropped his weight belt as he got on to the boat and I had to dive down and get it.

When I got back on the boat, I asked him why he was so worried. "I only had 3 minutes of air left!!" I told him he needed to learn about his dive computer because he had a lot of air left and the 3 minutes was obviously till he reached the "reserve" set by the computer. He never did understand that. What annoyed me most was that the two divers were supposed to be advanced divers but they were useless and had to be saved by me, a brand new open water diver.

 

[АлександрД]

nice story, that remember to me mine...

My FOURTH dive with scuba (yea, dive of the OWD PADI course!).
Egypt.
Boat dive not far from beach (El Quseir)
We finished dive, and now we have to go back to the boat...
When we had dive, weather became windier and small waves starts to go...
Small - not over 1 m between crests and troughs.
For me it was really small, because when I was a child and living on the Black Sea cost we swimming (with fins) in the waves over 2m height, and over 3m on the beach. It was normal in our region. And 1 m waves it was may be over one third of all time on the sea...

My German instructor, girl, lets me go first to the ladder, as her student.
I`m accustomed oneself to such waves behavior, waiting when ship goes to the through and aft and ladder goes to the crest, catching ladder with all my forces, waiting wave change, when wave takes ladder out from the water, and I`m easy going up from the water to the deck....
Then my instructor tries to do it.... I do not know, maybe she was little sick at this moment, may be others, but her try was fault. She fell down from height to the water, than ladder try to hit her (I think even little hits her shoulder), and she is swimming near ladder...
I stand on the deck and have great dilemma:
- I`m a student.... She is my Instructor.... what should I do? Can I go to the water and try to help her? In that case she will look not as good as instructor, because student helps to the instructor...
- I`m a man, she`s woman, and my duty to help her anyway....
Maybe five seconds, when I dropping my scuba, and thinking... Than short look at her, and jump ...

Sure, I help her to catch the ladder, help her to climb and holding her scuba... it was not too easy, but was not a problem.
Later she was not gone to second dive in this day, and it emerged that she was really sick.

... When I finished week later my AOWD course, they disclosed to me, that all OWD course they suspect that me and my wife - we are PADI external auditors
I had long free diving experience, before first time in my life I try to dive with scuba.... And underwater swimming and most exercises was not a problem for me.....

 

[KatieMac]

Thinking back on your first 100 dives (or in a new environment/configuration), what things did you encounter that needed an appropriate response to avoid it qualifying as a "near miss"? The mild incidents you fix or avoid now automatically... But caught you by surprise or needed effort the first time you encountered them.

As I best recall here's mine in no particular order: (rough and ready style childhood dive experiences)

Puked
Got lost
Knocked myself out
Entangled
Swimming up with no air
Trapped and ditched equipment
Twisted ankle
Had to float back to shore
Reverse block (a later one cost me 6 years away from diving)
Mask lost
Weight belt jammed
Blown oring
Flooded reg (double hose)
Choked
Ripped fin
Buddy stopped pumping (surface supply)
Airbell tipped (heavy when empty)
Bad headaches (co2 retention)
Moderate hypothermia (Canadian waters, no wetsuit)
Under ice

Hmm, well that list was longer than anticipated... In full disclosure, I didn't log dives until very recently, so those memories might span the first 50 or 200 dives...

Good times!

How about yours?
Cameron

Wow, that's a lot of issues in 100 dives!

 

[electric_diver]

Interesting thread. The first hundred dives were a very very long time ago and took at least 3 years to do.

Challenge #1: being too poor to dive much
Challenge #2: not having enough vacation time to go anywhere

One of my first dives post certification was a great lakes dive on a warm summer evening. I put on my 7mm rented wet suit first and then assembled my gear. I overheated and then sucked back my tank in 15 minutes. I never did that again.

Another early dive event was the time I got hypothermia. We did a shore dive (Tobermory lighthouse) and I towed the flag. I felt fine during the dive. It was in the parking lot where I started to get colder and colder as I put the gear away. Back at the campground I began shivering ferociously while my buddies (one an instructor, the other a doctor) did their thing. I said nothing to them but I got in my car and turned the heater up full blast. It was August. We went out to dinner and I was feeling miserable and not hungry. I ordered a bowl of soup. After I ate it it was like a switch had been thrown. I went from cold shivering and miserable to ravenous. Only after did I realize I had been hypothermic.
Lessons learned: what hypothermia feels like and looks like. Cold water diving in a wetsuit sucks. Camping and cold water diving sucks. More experienced buddies might not notice you are in trouble post dive so tell them.

Another one was the time I got narced at 70 feet. The previous evening I had stayed out until 4am partying with a waitress. I got less than three hours sleep and then went to work. I rushed home from work to get to the dive store to rent my gear. We dove the Wolfe Islander II in Kingston. Out on the car ferry deck at 70 feet I realized I was feeling as drunk as I had been the night before. We ascended 10 feet and it completely went away. It was very surreal. I've never been that narced again even though 70 feet is often a deco stop. Lessons learned: don't try to keep up with bar staff when they are drinking. Sleep before diving is important.

Another learning experience came after the first hundred dives on my first trip to Cozumel. I got hiccups during a drift dive on Santa Rosa wall. They were tequila flavoured hiccups from the night before mixed with stomach acid. I can not emphasize how much that sucked. I finished the dive but it was not fun. Lesson learned: cut back on the tequila in Cozumel

 

[Schwob]

@northernone
Wow, what a list!

Meager list for me:

1. Dives 8, 9, 10 or so, first ones after OW class. Went to Bonaire with son, learned the hard way that good buoancy control becomes miraculously easier when you finally use the inflate and deflate buttons a whole lot less and most importantly stop mixing them up.

2. Read Sea, somewhere between dives 40ish and 86ish or so (was there two weeks, did all dives): Lost son during night dive because I occupied myself with camera and lighting way too much and when it finally occurred on me to check on him, he swam away fast with his yellow fins and when I cought up with him it was someone else from another group from another boat... Made me feel like a real bad dad and DB... But I found him eventually... allowed me to go back home to his mom,... I guess...

3. Red Sea, same trip, Time to drop out of the dinghy, all checks OK, except my mask is not (backwards) on my head. Actually left it on the LOB. First dive of day and did not have my coffee yet. Embarassing mistake. DM is cool, they decent, plan is to meet at 45' around "that cone"
... I say sure, head back with dinghy driver, get mask, head back out , descent, find group (and most importantly son), dive goes on...
For a few minutes, I see it as my first solo dive... but I also conclude I am more of a bonehead than I thought... And for once, I was not short on air first on that dive...

4. Red Sea, same trip, son chooses to follow DM instead of staying with buddy (me). DM takes of like a rocket after a diver who headed into the blue like a rocket trying to catch up with hammerheads despite knowing better. I was pushing a camera and lighting and after a while could not catch up with son and realized my breathing rate, exertion and the gloom and doom of co2 buildup... It really became a gloom and doom world out there. I thought I need to stop moving until that changes and hope my son catches up with the at this point to me beyond sight DM. Reef out of sight as well (but I had a heading for it, but suspected my son did not). Luckily he finally turned and looked and heeded my signing and let the DM go and paired up again... We had a talk... The reverse kind of talk of what we had after #2...

5.) Getting closer to dive 100:
Calming down a seemingly out of control, foot light, wildly flailing drysuit diver in a (sanitized) wreckand get him untangled from the wreckline he had entangled himself in pretty well with all that flailing... and thinking if this were a paid stunt in the wreck class I was in it would be a much better class than it happening to one of the students while the instructor is away out of sight continuing said line which his student buddy was supposed to follow... Anyway, all ended well ... as I had something to do with that, I got something out of that class...

6.) All dives: Air consumption:
Nightmare... Try to ignore, try to ignore...

 

[EireDiver606]

CO2 retention on most of my first dives trying to make my dive times longer
Tank almost slipped off my wing underwater, had to hold it with my arm for the dive. Then when I climbed up the ladder, someone had to grab the first stage because it was going to slip through. Confused because on land, it was secure and wasn’t moving when I bounced it around.
Almost lost someone’s knife

 

[BRT]

I remember sitting on a rock off the side of an island in the San Juans with my weight belt down around my thighs and I couldn't seem to get it up under my BCD. Now I would have just gone head down in the water and fixed the problem but that was kind of hard to do with my weight belt hindering my legs from working. This was long before weight integrated BCD's and I would never wear a weight belt now.

 

[stretchthepenn]

Getting cold. Very cold.

• Exiting the water after a November night dive at the Blue Hole in Santa Rosa, NM. I was diving wet, so once I got out, I started shivering, and my fingers went numb. I might as well have been wearing lobster mittens.
• Drift-diving the Colorado River in a 5mm wetsuit, a few miles downstream of the Hoover Dam. The water comes off the bottom of Lake Mead; it was downright chilly, and even more so because I hardly kicked my feet at all the entire dive.
• Flooding a drysuit on a night dive off Casino Point, on Catalina Island. I unzipped the suit, and what with the stiff breeze off the water, went hypothermic in mere seconds.