Funny dive stories

[plsdiver4377]

This one happened just this past Sunday at Lake Jocassee. Me and my buddy just wanted to get in a couple of relaxing dives, well we arrive and its raining cats and dogs.

So we're discussing the dive plan while we are gearing up, do our buddy checks as usual, and down to the water we go. Everything thing checks out (or so I thought), we start down and I puff a little air in my wing, shortly thereafter I start sinking a little faster than I thought I should. This goes on till we are in about 25' of water and realize what the problem is, I normally store my wing with the dump-valve off and stupidly forgot to put it back on while getting ready. My buddy is laughing through his reg whilst watching me swim up to stay off the bottom and put the thing back.

The other good one was in Florida, while diving the Outer Patches in the Keys. My wife and I are gearing up on our boat in fairly rough seas (3'+ swells) when a particularly large swell hit the boat just as I had started twisting the valve on my tank. My wife was just about pitched overboard at the same time, so being the loving husband I am I promptly helped her and forgot all about my tank. So we hurry and finish gearing up and jump in the water (to keep from gettin beat to death).

We checked everything except the most important, you guessed it, tank valvles. Well about 15 minutes later this little oversight came back and bit me square in the butt, my reg just stops delivering air. So I check my second and nope no air. I swim over to my wife who is about 10' feet away and fussing with her second because it was having an intermittant small free-flow, and I give her the OOA signal point to her reg to which she responds with a negative nod of her head. Well by this time the need for air is getting a little more urgent and I do all this again and again the same response. By now the urge to breathe is getting extremely urgent and I'm starting to get mad figuring she's forgotten all of her training and I'm strongly considering an ESA (we are only in 25' of water so not really a problem). I go through the motions one more time, and again no. Well this just doesn't cut it so I snatch her reg out of her mouth and she calmly puts her second in her mouth then proceeds to get thoroughly pissed at me for doing that to her till she realizes that I'm turning the valve on my tank so that I'll have air.

She kept saying no since she thought that I was wanting to know if she needed help with her reg since it was free-flowing slightly, thats how intent she was on the problem. So we both had to apologize to each other for our mutual stupidity, but it was a very valuable lesson learn, and funny now but not then.

 

[diverrick]

I kept forgeting to unhook the bungee from the tanks neck BEFORE I hooked up into the BC. First time it was ok, but after the third time, I had the whole boat rolling in the isles. They got to the point where when I got ready to gear up, no one would say a thing, and the boat would get REAL quite. they would all just wait for me to do it again. I just couldn't seem to remember that step for some reason on that trip. Pretty embarassing after the first time.

 

[jepuskar]

Bailey,

That sounds like Haigh quarry to me, those darn Blue Gills are something else. I love watching OW students reactions when you tell them your wearing a hood because the fish bite...and they aren't..lolol

My funniest moment happened my last dive in Cozumel a few months ago...we dove Colombia Shallows and the DM, which we got to know pretty well beforehand BTW, pointed out to small stingrays seemingly fighting....my buddy and I were like cool....so I started to get closer to take a pic and he taps me and tells me to back up...i gave him a look like why....he then.....

Takes his index finger on his right hand and proceeds to push it in and out of a circle he creates with his left thumb and index finger (stop for a second and do this) Yes, the international sign for, ummmm....yeah..you get the hint. His eyes got all big when he did it, the funniest thing...I laughed so hard...

Well, the stingrays swam away and he took off after them..now this guy has been diving Coz for well over 20 years, so I was like, this has got to be good for the DM to get all excited....so around a coral head we go and there they are...going at it like nobody was watching.....being the perverts my buddy and I are, we cant help but crack up underwater.....I was fighting so hard not to get water in my mouth...we watched for a couple minutes it seemed and they should no sign of letting up, made me feel jealous.

What story like this would be complete without a pic?

http://underwaterpictures.net/love.jpg

Jason

 

[Xtreme]

I went to Destin, FL. this weekend and went out with some friends to dive the Ms. Louise, an old tug sunk years ago just off the coast of Destin at a depth of 55'.

On my first dive I went down on the anchor rope, which was positioned at the stern of the old tug, the visibility was about 20’ to 25’. Once down I proceeded around her stern and along her port side when all of a sudden I saw my first Octopus ahead of me.

I pulled my camera out of my BC, controlled my breathing and began stalking the Octopus to get close enough for a good picture. As I closed on the Octopus with my camera up and ready I noticed through the lens that it looked like no Octopus I've ever seen in books or on T.V. I lowered my camera and realized I had gotten all excited and stalked a plastic bag!!!

I looked to see if my dive buddy was watching me and fortunately he was preoccupied with something else. I picked up the bag, put it in my BC pocket and disposed of it once back onboard the "Aquanaut".

One day I'll find me a real Octopus, until then I guess I'll keep picking up bags...HEHEHEHEHE...

 

[tstiemerling]

Hah yes! Been there, done that. Usually one of the students is also briefed to either drop his weight belt or inflate his BC so he/she floats away. The IDC really was good fun!

This forms a perfect triangle of three, each breathing from someone elses regulator.

when they realise how silly they look, all three regs get spat out and then no-one has a reg.

cracks me up every time I see it. At this point I usually shake my head and swim away.
.

 

[DBailey]

Bailey,

That sounds like Haigh quarry to me, those darn Blue Gills are something else. I love watching OW students reactions when you tell them your wearing a hood because the fish bite...and they aren't..lolol

It was Haigh. The best part was there were three groups that day with my LDS. My group was the last one to do the skills, so I came out of the water with the other groups lounging around on shore. The trickle/stream of blood going down the side of my face was an attention grabber. There were some chuckles when I said it was the blue gills. Other people start telling tales of other blue gill attacks.

This past weekend at Haigh I was doing my AOW. I had my hood on so the facial attacks were not an issue. Being a warm day in a farmer john, I generally go suited up and in the water to cool off while I waited for the rest of the class (all drysuit guys). So I was waiting on the surface, and then all of a sudden, in raid succession, were some quick hits to my...ummm...groin area. With an epressive "WTF!!", my instructor was wondering if something was wrong. Long story short, I had a loose thread on the wetsuit in the crotch area, and the local blue gills were attacking the thread.

Some day I will get those blue gills.

 

[scuba-punk]

I was helping with a Rescue class and I was playing the part of the 'Lost Buddy.' One of my fellow DM's was along as my invisi-buddy. Well, it took the class quite a while to find us. We were hiding under a platform, so there wasn't an obvious stream of bubbles at the surface. After 5 minutes of wetnotes tic-tac-toe and hangman, we had to come up with something else to pass the time away. It started with trying to imitate whale-sounds (poorly), so poorly in fact, that we switched to the show tunes game. You start humming a theme song from a TV show and your buddy has to guess it by finishing the song. 10 minutes later we're laughing hysterically and then it got ugly. Let's just say that hacking quarry oysters through your reg will not only crud it up, but will cause your buddy to practically choke to death from laughing so hard

Granted, if we had started with the Quarry Oysters first, it wouldn't have been as funny, but when you and your buddy are swatting at it trying to hit the other one with it - kinda' like snot chicken - well, I've said too much already...

-Frank

 

[MikeFerrara]

I had two diver hang together, one of which was the lost victim and the other just a buddy.

When the students found them they grabbed the wrong guy...he resisted...but the students just though that I'd changed the excersize so they just weren't going to take no for an answer. It was a heck of a fight.

In one of my rescue classes I had a student invent a new method of towing an unresponsive diver. He found that placing a finger in each eye socket worked really well. We call it the eyeball tow. The only problem was that every one was afraid to work with him.

 

[MikeFerrara]

are difficult devices to lear for some.

I know a guy who never wears a hood no matter how cold the water is. He says that he can't hear the air going into his suit and can't control his buoyancy if he wears a hood.

I made him put a hood on one day cuz his ears looked like they were going to fall off. Sure enough he added air to his suit until he blew up like a balloon about to bust and shot to the surface.

I had forgotten what he's said about not being able to hear the air and asked him what happened and sure enough he said that he didn't think air was going in the suit because he couldn't hear it with the hood on. Oh well.

 

[Groundhog246]

My dentist also dives. He was diving a local quarry last year, regular jacket BC and weight belt. During his surface interval he was discussing BC's with another diver. When they were getting ready to go again, the other diver asked if he wanted to try his weight integrated BC. So sure he says and slip into it. Gets in the water and suddenly he's dropping to the bottom, hits the inflator and air is pouring out of the OPV. Still heavy and finning like mad he makes it to the bank and crawls out. Realizes on shore, he's got his 30 lbs weight belt on along with the other guys 24 lbs in the BC pockets. So 54 lbs of lead and about 30 some pounds of lift.
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Did a dive last year in the same quarry with my wife and a friend. We're about halfway along and suddenly when I inhale it's very wet wet. Spit the water out and gently try inhaling again, still very wet. Reach up to try purging and discover the only thing in my mouth is the rubber mouthpiece. Zip tie has let go. I carefull hold onto the mouthpiece and reach for my octo. As I'm reaching my wife (gotta love her) darts in with her octo in hand as she had seen the reg fall away. I waved her off and switched to my octo. Since we were in a max 25 foot deep quarry and diving with 3, I made the decision to continue the dive as there were still 2 available alternate air sources (as well , all 3 of us had been trained how to share a single reg). About a minute later the third member of our trio sees me with the bright yellow octo in my mouth and rushes over (I was diving on the left, with my wife in the center and the third member on the right, so we could not so easily see each other) to make sure I was ok. He was also new to diving at the time and after we were ashore could hardly believe I remained so calm about the whole thing that he hadn't noticed. (I'm sure by now he'd be every bit as calm).
Odd thing is, first dive in the same quarry this year, same reg set, had the exact same thing happen (they'd been serviced in between, so not the same zip tie).
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Also last summer, we dove the Conestoga for the first time. We had a good pre-dive briefing, except for how far out the wreck was. Seeing the engine sticking up well off shore, we expected a bit of a swim. So we entered, dropped and suddenly there's a 'rock' wall in front of us. After drifting a bit, see a missing plank and realize, that's not rock, it's zebra mussels on the wreck. So we relax and drift along. As I watch, my wife's hood has built up a bubble of air in the top. She reaches up a hand and squashes the air out and her mask slides up and off. Surprise! She appeared quite calm as we continued to drift (current) along and put her mask back on and cleared, but I do wish I had video of the rather surprised look when it popped off. More vents have been added to her hood.