sunapeebob
Contributor
I tell friends interested in diving, that the negative experiences teach you more than just positives and it takes a long time to become proficient in diving. This is one of those. My son and I were diving at Back Beach in Rockport, MA Saturday morning. This is a common training area. This was our first ocean dive of the year ( had had dives in fresh water this year). It was primarily a shake down dive. My son has about 250 dives and is rescue certified and I have about 100 dives and am AOW. We were diving dry. We entered the water at high tide. In fact, I had not seen it that high at Back Beach before. My son tells me afterward that he thought it was near full moon recently. We went in and the vis was <5 feet. We went out a ways, hoping the water would clear some - no dice. We went about 150 yards off shore. We decided to call the dive. We started back in and that is when we noticed that there was a large surge and the tide was really ripping going out. We had a very hard time coming back in. We tried to go to the bottom and hug this, but it was even worse vis now and we couldn't keep an even compass heading due to the receding tide and surge. We decided to surface swim it in. However, we were not really making headway. I decided to come closer to the breakwater, thinking that would get me out of the receding tide - then got thrown onto the rocks. I caught my breath and then resumed swimming in. We finally made it past the breakwater and into a private little harbor area for some sort of condo. My son essentially pulled me into this area. Kudos to my dive buddy! We unrigged and talked about what had happened. We clearly had misread the tide. I do not know if the moon had any effect on this tide. There was a small onshore breeze, but it did not seem much. I was a little overweighted, which might have contributed to the increased workload.
I do find that my own negative experiences teach me to be safer, but I am not sure what I would have changed, other than calling the dive sooner, staying away from the rocks towards the center of the beach area, better weighting (new tank - was not sure of the -lbs), etc.
I have read other threads about surges elsewhere, this is the most I have experienced to date as well as the tide going out. It was not a rip current, but acted a little like one. From the time we entered to the time we left, about 1.5 hours, it had dropped somewhere between 4-6 feet.
Thoughts, suggestions, etc would be appreciated.
Bob
I do find that my own negative experiences teach me to be safer, but I am not sure what I would have changed, other than calling the dive sooner, staying away from the rocks towards the center of the beach area, better weighting (new tank - was not sure of the -lbs), etc.
I have read other threads about surges elsewhere, this is the most I have experienced to date as well as the tide going out. It was not a rip current, but acted a little like one. From the time we entered to the time we left, about 1.5 hours, it had dropped somewhere between 4-6 feet.
Thoughts, suggestions, etc would be appreciated.
Bob