DiverEMT
Guest
Well no one missed anything yesterday on our Manitou Passage dive. The day turned into a small disaster. Only one other person showed up, although two members of our six person group had good excuses. When we were loading my gear into the boat my buddy told me that he forgotten his tanks. I had an extra that I was able to lend him since we were only going to do a short dive because of my buddy's daughter's birthday party that afternoon anyway. We got out to South Manitou Island and we couldn't locate the wreck that we going to dive. We decided to go around the point to find another wreck when we realized that we were running low on gas. We decided to drop anchor and do a shallow dive. As we were getting geared up my dive buddy started getting motion sick but he assured me that he was going to be ok when he got into the water, and that this always happened. I too started feeling a little sick with my head down putting gear together in the waves, the waves were between 2 and 3 feet. I finally got geared up and I was going to float on the surface until my buddy finished getting geared up. He was almost ready when I made my roll off the boat and into the water. It was so frigid that I felt like I could barely breath. I got a little disoriented until I surfaced then something was wrong. I felt like my ribcage was being squeezed too tight and I couldn't breath- well I could breath I was talking but it was difficult. I lossened my cummbund on my BC thinking that that was the problem-it wasn't. I was still a little panicked still-my entry was a little traumatic for me. Even though I was able to get into my wetsuit, it is too small- I've put on just enough weight in the last year that it was unconfortable in the water. I dumped my BC and my buddy pulled it into the boat. I got back into the boat and dumped my shorty. My dive buddy was still feeling sick and dumped his BC and Shorty but he jumped into the water to cool himself down and try to help the motion sickness. I still had my johnny on so we donned our fins and swam to shore. On shore my buddy told me he felt like his blood sugar was dropping. We realized I forgot the snacks and drinks in my car. I dropped my fins next to him and walked up to the lighthouse and asked the keepers for some sugar. All they had was cheese so I asked them to get the Ranger that was on the Island and asked her to bring some sugar. The Ranger came and brought Ornage Juice and cookies. She trains with our department where I (and my dive buddy) work. She was very sweet. I had to swim out to the boat and bring it into the shore so my buddy could get in. When I was getting back into my buddy's boat one side of the ladder broke off the side of the boat. My buddy told me not to worry about it that it was fixable. I told him that I would help him fix it. We made it back to shore rather uneventful and everyone was back to normal by the time we were there.
At least we all made it out alive.....
We're already talking about our next dive and how to make it less problematic and more diving!!!!
At least we all made it out alive.....
We're already talking about our next dive and how to make it less problematic and more diving!!!!
