Things I learned the hard way

[6gunsal]

I think that remembering to deflate my BC when reaching the boat ladder in heavy seas, would be good one (it only took me the last dive to figure that one out :dork: )

I've never been boat diving, can you explain this?


The kneepads on wetsuits go over the front of your knees, and keeping that in mind helps orientate the rest of the wesuit to your upper body corectly.:11doh:

 

[diver 85]

Why not end your 1st dive day with a nite dive??....Am I misreading this??.We always do on our trips to CZM, get there @ noonish and make a 2 tank twilite/nite dive.......

 

[keytofreedom]

Why not end your 1st dive day with a nite dive??....Am I misreading this??.We always do on our trips to CZM, get there @ noonish and make a 2 tank twilite/nite dive.......

Sorry, I meant this was my first dive day EVER. Newly certified, I had never been diving in the ocean before when I embarked on this liveaboard trip in the Bahamas and didn't really know what the heck I was doing yet, so that night dive probably wasn't the best idea.

 

[captain]

I've never been boat diving, can you explain this?


The kneepads on wetsuits go over the front of your knees, and keeping that in mind helps orientate the rest of the wesuit to your upper body corectly.:11doh:

You don't want to be positively bouyant when the boats ladder is moving up and down with the waves. When it goes down you will not be able to hang on to the ladder and when it comes up you might get wacked by it. When you grab it you want to be able to hold on and go up and down with it. I may have air in the BC while I am waiting my turn to board the boat but before going for the ladder I deflate it. If the seas are calm than it is not a big issue but if the waves are 2 feet or more it is.

 

[sgj99]

i have learned that from the moment i get off the boat until i'm back on the boat to leave my regulator in my mouth. after jumping off the boat in cozumel i was on the surface waiting for my husband to jump in and we would descend together. once he was in i took my reg out of my mouth to tell him something and swallowed some sea water. by the time we finished that dive and were doing our surface interval i was feeling pretty sick. we thought i was seasick so when it came time to do our second dive i suited back up (with a lot of help from husband and dm) to get back in since sitting on a rocking boat was what i thought was making me sick. after about 10 minutes i called the dive and came up. as soon as i made it back to the boat the nice guy on the boat hung on to me while i fed the fish my breakfast. luckily i'm not the first nor the last person who will ever puke on a dive boat so i wasn't embarrassed but it was definitely a learning experience: keep the reg in the mouth!!

 

[wve]

My wife was making her first night dive in an 80 ft deep artesian well. The group plan was to "go to about 50 ft, swim around, look at stuff." Well, unbeknown to us, something had happened to the well, and the normally clear water was very murky. We had trouble seeing each other, and orientation went to pot. I looked at my wife and saw that she was suddenly developing an uncontrolled descent -- her greatest fear! I reached to try to stop her, but it was too late. I tried to swim down to grab her, but I couldn't go down fast enough. "Oh, well," I thought. "Her instructor is right beside her, so he'll fix it." And as I turned back upright to figure out my next move, my head struck against an overhanging ledge at about 25 ft. What?

Turns out my wife had not gone anywhere. She wasn't going down; I was going up and didn't know it. Lesson: Sometimes it is hard to tell who is moving. Don't assume it is the other guy who has the problem.

 

[Walter]

Never end your first dive day ever with a night dive

That would be a standards violation. I'm not aware of any agency that allows training at night or that allows night dives before getting certified or that lets you complete all certification dives in one day. The earliest you can make a night dive, without violating standards, is the second dive day ever.

 

[keytofreedom]

That would be a standards violation. I'm not aware of any agency that allows training at night or that allows night dives before getting certified or that lets you complete all certification dives in one day. The earliest you can make a night dive, without violating standards, is the second dive day ever.

Sorry, Walter. I wasn't clear on this one. I was open water certified and had done all of my classroom work toward my advanced cert. All of my training to that point had been in a quarry and this was my first OCEAN dive day of my first real dive trip (Blackbeard's liveaboard). An instructor from my dive shop was along to sign off on the dives I needed to get my advanced but that's a whole 'nother story. A lot of mistakes were made by both of us on this particular dive.

 

[FireDiver443]

Diving: Never set your mask on the bench before sitting down when re-boarding the boat after the dive. The corollary to this rule is always know where your boat crew keeps the broom & dust pan to clean up tempered glass, which scatters EVERYWHERE.

Life: Common sense isn't.

 

[Hockeynut]

Diving: Make sure there are no kinks in the line of the p-valve.

Non: Never try to split apart frozen hamburger patties with a big freakin butcher knife.