SCUBA Bloopers

[movieflick]

Please share your funny SCUBA stories and oops moments.

I was once met at the end of the dock by an angry fellow accusing me of being a POS theif... I wounder if the fact that I had mistakenly grabbed his gear bag instead of mine had anything to do with it?

 

[Searcaigh]

When I was doing my DM training in Jeddah, the instructor was explaining to four students at the side of the pool about the next skills.

One of the skills included removing the regulator casting it aside and retrieving it with a wide sweep of the right arm.

When the instructor asked if there were any questions, one girl in the group (an Irish nurse) said "Now why would we be wanting to through away our regulators" I nearly fell in the pool laughing.

Actually the Irish lass turned out to be a very proficient diver, and I had quite a few enjoyable dives with her after she qualified.

 

[CuNanoTube]

I accidentally didn't seal the zipper on my father's dry suit the whole way.
You can guess what happened.
Fortunately he has a 1984 whites commercial quality drysuit made of expanded neoprene and inflate / deflate valves positioned over his nipples. So he just ended up wearing a loosely fitting wetsuit for the duration of the dive.
I should also note this happened in January.

 

[cloudflint]

I accidentally didn't seal the zipper on my father's dry suit the whole way.
You can guess what happened.
Fortunately he has a 1984 whites commercial quality drysuit made of expanded neoprene and inflate / deflate valves positioned over his nipples. So he just ended up wearing a loosely fitting wetsuit for the duration of the dive.
I should also note this happened in January.

I had a similar incident in a really old otter commercial suit I had. It had a "Vanity zip" as we called it running across the crotch in case nature called while you where in the suit. Of course one day I rolled into the water off the RHIB and immediately had a massive rush of 44f water to the crotch which was rather unpleasant. To make it even worse I had really thick neoprene gloves on so I couldn't grasp the zip to close it. In the end I just went down to about 10 meters and my gloves compressed enough that I could grab the zip and close it

 

[ScubaSarus]

Diving at Stonington Point here in CT. A visitor to the point from the Midwest never saw a scuba diver before and asked me to pose for her. After the photo, I entered the water and submerged, I vigorously kicked with my booties to start the dive not realizing I had forgot my fins on the trunk of my car.

 

[Deefstes]

One one of our first dives my wife was still having trouble descending and we knew that she wasn't underweighted. So I told her, on this dive, you simply make sure that you equalise, I will pull you down. I took her by the hand and started swimming down. I knew it was probably going to be a little bit of work but I had no idea how much. By the time we got to the reef I was positively exhausted and spent the rest of the very short dive catching my breath - of course sucking my cylinder empty in no time.

The funny thing was that as soon as we got to the reef, another diver reached over to my wife's purge valve and emptied her BC of air.

 

[Guba]

Fairly early in my diving experience, two buddies and I were diving a lake when I found a perfectly good small-boat anchor and about 40 feet of rope. I can honestly say that I didn't think things through too well, because I coiled the rope and carried the anchor with me as we continued our dive. I had to add air to my BC, of course, but I remember thinking, "Don't drop this thing or you'll head to the surface like a Polaris missile!" After several minutes, I noticed that I had dropped a few coils of rope, so I reeled them back in. However, the end of the trailing rope seemed to be stuck on something, perhaps under my tank. I gave it a tug, but it didn't yield, so I gave it a really good yank. Problem was, it wasn't stuck on my tank...it was tangled in my dump valve lanyard. With a sudden burbling of air, I plummeted to the lake bottom, following the anchor I still carried, and crashed in a cloud of silt. Luckily, the bottom was only about five feet down, but I could hear my partners nearly spitting out their regs laughing.

 

[jmasin]

More of an extended blooper...

When I certified it was in 55*F water, so I had 7mm of neoprene and God knows how much lead in a full jacket. When it came to remove/replace weights at surface, it took me 20 minutes to do it. The jacket weight pockets were old, so the velcro inside to keep the weights separate failed, so the weights would bunch up and I couldn't fit them in the jacket pocket/slot. I imagine I looked absolutely ridiculous flopping around trying to get those damn things back in the slot... while everyone else was asking themselves WTF is his problem!

 

[coldwaterdufus]

Happened a month ago, night dive, pitch black. Cold, about 2 degrees C. Drysuit diving. About 8 of us were all geared up in the boat, all is well leaving the dock. We get about 1/2 kilometer from the dock and we run out of gas. This is at a dive operation, not on some buddies boat. Captain asks all of us to stand up and walk from side to side in the boat to " rock " it enough to get some more gas in the fuel lines. Quite a scene with 8 fully geared guys trying not to fall over while walking back and forth. It worked and we got back to the dock, but I'm thinking this is nuts. I can laugh now, but wasn't too impressed at the time. Had the potential to get real serious real fast. Next AM going out on the first dive of the day, I asked the Captain if he had enough gas this time. Didn't say too much...

 

[Lead_carrier]

I had a similar incident in a really old otter commercial suit I had. It had a "Vanity zip" as we called it running across the crotch in case nature called while you where in the suit. Of course one day I rolled into the water off the RHIB and immediately had a massive rush of 44f water to the crotch which was rather unpleasant. To make it even worse I had really thick neoprene gloves on so I couldn't grasp the zip to close it. In the end I just went down to about 10 meters and my gloves compressed enough that I could grab the zip and close it

Bet that gave a whole new meaning to shrink wrapped.