Moonglow
Contributor
I planned a twenty minute dive to test the two new 100s that I just bought, just swim around the cavern zone. My buddy was 100 yards away at the truck. I was walking down the last two steps to wait for him, and I slipped feet first into the water while carrying my fins in my left hand, primary in my mouth. I sank quickly and hit the bottom hard tanks first with my primary yanked from my mouth. But my mask stayed put and I just lay there for ten seconds, shocked and not reacting. As I was trying to find my under-the-chin bungied second, I felt a shooting pain in my right arm and back. Shocked by the pain, I lied there sucking air. I finally put the secondary in my mouth with my left hand, took four deep breaths, and thought that I broke something serious.
I knew after thirty seconds that I was thinking clearly but when I tried to move, my back burned in pain. So I continued to lay there looking up at the sky through twelve feet of water, turtled on top of 85 pounds of tanks. After thirty more seconds I thought about how I was going to get out of this. I tried to grab my weight belt buckle with my right hand and drop it. I could not move my right arm without excruciating pain, so I again reached with my left hand and found the buckle, it must have taken another a full minute to drop the belt. I then snapped open my two-inch quick release buckle mounted on my left chest strap with my left hand (on a custom made harness from our shop). By then I was thinking that I broke my back, and felt a little panic creep in. I was then a twenty-three year old dive instructor and was trained by two of the best cave instructors in Mexico. DO NOT PANIC!!
I then tried to loosen the buckle on the harness belt with my left hand, did so, but I could not easily get the belt through the buckle (practice this more, I thought). I then started to float slightly (wearing thermals under my TL350) and felt a shooting pain when my right arm was squeezed by the right harness, about fainted. Now under the water for four minutes I thought: how was I going to get to the steps, I'm 5'6", not like I could stand up. I started to rise, more pain, but my right arm slipped out from the right harness. I grabbed the manifold with my left hand and pulled myself down slightly. PAIN!! I then rolled onto my knees after a few seconds and saw my 7-foot primary laying right in front of me, I switched seconds and thought I had been underwater for five/six minutes! "Where the hell is he?!?!?
Two seconds later, he dived in and dropped to me wearing his mask, wetsuit and weight belt only. He looked at me holding onto the manifold with my second stage in my mouth. He said later that he knew what had happened. He motioned at me to not move. NOT MOVE, no sh*t!?!? He then motioned for me to take a big breath and let go of the manifold (he used hand signals). He dropped his weight belt, took the primary second out of my mouth, grabbed me around my now floating waist. He pushed off the bottom with his bootied feet, and in three seconds shot us to the surface, MASSIVE PAIN!!! He "rescue" hauled me to the steps ten feet away.
Three hours later at the Cancun hospital the x-rays showed that I cracked my right clavicle.
It never entered my mind to go for the knife (DIR-style sawed-off blade sheathed just to the left of my harness waist buckle) because of my long time practice of don-and-doff using the quick release buckle. Thinking back, I don't think that I could have cut my harness in the state that was in.
