GOOD NEWS! Well, unless you happen to be swimming right behind me in the freshly lowered visibility
Long story short, I got my OW Cert.
Now that you know the ending, take a few minutes and explore with me, if you will, the journey that brought this small miracle about.
Our group of 10 was down to only 4 people because on Sat. we had several people from the morning group that were redoing dives and none of them were joining us on Sunday.
Sunday afternoon we had 2 dives to do. The first was to be a "deep" dive down to 43' and the second was a dive we got to plan. For those familiar with Haigh Quarry, the first dive was down to the boat. This was my first dive in a hood and gloves and I really wasn't comfortable in the new gear. We surface swam out to the buoy and we started down. 'Started' is where it ended for me, for a while anyway. I dumped the air in my BCD and got about 3 inches under and that was it. I exhaled...looked down at everyone else getting deeper and then my head broke the surface. I tried again. Now I was getting nervous, which caused me to breath harder which of course made it harder to sink. My instructor swam over, and he didn't look happy.
(It turns out that he wasn't upset with me. LOL...He had moments before done a giant stride entry and had forgotten to zip his drysuit.rofl. He is very serious and stern looking anyway, but now? oh boy.)
Anyway, there I am, unable to go down because I'm working too hard at it and now I get that look and think 'I'm really blowing this'. On his suggestion I use the rope to pull myself down and once I get to about 15 feet or so I am able to just follow the rope. At about 30 feet I hit the thermocline. The temps are dropping from 67 deg. to 42 deg.. WOW was that cold. I finally see the group at the boat and as I reach it I am handed a telephone. This turned out to be a really good thing as it got my mind off of the problems I had and I joked like it was an obscene phone call. The levity took my mind off the cold and neative stuff long enough to settle down. We did a circle around the boat to get the name of it as 'proof' we were down that deep and then one DM waves for me? us? to follow. I start following but after about 3 feet turn to see where my buddy was and I don't see him. I turn back around and the DM is gone. Nervous time again. Do I follow the DM's instructions and try to follow him or get back with my buddy. I go back to the boat and see my buddy coming around it again with the other DM who had made him do an extra lap. We hook up and the three of us start for the road. We pass over a metal platform and watch fish for a minute then pass under some supports for what used to be a conveyor. This whole time we are getting steadily shallower and I am getting higher above everyone. Not really bad but I'm about 5 feet up. I look at my computer and just then I break the surface. We are only in about 9 feet of water at this point so I swim over to the road just as they come up. I was really comfortable at that time so I must have been underweighted somehow. Anyway, as we are standing on the road wondering where our 2nd DM went, our missing DM pops up. He wasn't sure where he lost me and I explained that I decided to stay with Dan, my buddy. He didn't have any problems with that, for which I was grateful. I was really torn on what to do and hoped I made the right choice. He said that he thought I did so we got out for our SIT.
We figured out SAC rates. My first dive on Sat. was a whopping 48. I brought it down to about 31 by that 3rd dive so there is still hope. I do know that I have no chance of pushing any NDL in an 60' quarry with 2000psi in a steel 80. I run out of air first.
The last dive we get to plan ourselves. My buddy and mysel, being the compatable pair that we are, decide that deep and cold is bad, shallow and warm is good. We plan our dive and all is well until....My buddies daughter is informed she isn't going to get her cert today. There were a lot of factors that went into the decision but I think it was the right one. Not that this is always important, but she was only 16 and had been helped by her dad through everything up to this point. I guess she was ok in the water but she had trouble when it came time to do the book stuff. Without getting any further into that, her dad, who was actually already certified but had not dived...doven...dove in a while decided not to do the last dive. This left me and John. He had a simple dive planned and we decided to do it instead of mine which was a bit more of a surface swim. The two things we didn't plan on was our lack of buoyancy skills and a contour map that lacked details. The dive was to enter from the dock, go down the rope, and follow the wall around to the south where there should be a pipe in about 25 feet of water. The pipe was up off the bottom but it turned out to be at 38 feet which falls right below the thermocline.
As soon as we got in John got a leg cramp. We quickly talked and got his leg up in my chest and started to work it out without even looking at the instructor. When he was feeling better we decided that if he gets it again on the dive that we would try to work it out at depth but if he wanted to surface all he had to do was give the signal and we would call the dive. The descent went well and the only real problem we had besides the unexpected cold was that I kept outswimming John. I'd turn back to check where he was and need to stop and wait. John finally had sense to signal me to hold his hand. I'm glad he did because I didn't think of it and it solved our problem. Before we knew it we were at the pipe. We checked air and I was at the turn around point of 1200psi so we headed back. We managed to give a few hand signals which were supposed to mean, "It's too dang cold here. Lets go up to 25 feet for the trip back." That being done we made the trip back at about 34 feet, freezing the whole time. I spotted the rope and we made our way up to 15 feet and did a safety stop for 3 minutes. Our instructor then had us follow him over to the road before surfacing. He didn't feel like making us do a ladder exit and he wanted us to show him a quick rescue from about 10 feet and the road was the best place.
Afterwards, he said we really did a great job but he wanted to know why we didn't swim up where it was warmer. I looked at John and asked if he understood my hand signals back there and he said, "yeah. It's freaking cold down here. Lets go up to 25 feet." We laughed since we had been perfectly clear in the communication, but the execution had been miserable. lol Neither of us had been able to steady ourselves above 30 feet. I think the instructor liked that we had at least successfully communicated our desire even if we weren't stable enough to do it. We both managed to stay well off the bottom though and were within our dive plan which had a contingency depth of 40 feet. The instructor commented that the dive was planned and executed very well. Especially since we had to change things just before we went in to account for my higher SAC rate and shorter fill than his original buddy.
All in all it was a good day and a really good weekend. I have plans to go to Pearl lake this weekend and dive. I just got off the phone with the owner of the dive shop(the instructor for my pool and class sessions) and discussed my renting a tank to take into the pool here at the apartments where I live to practice hovering. Both he and the instructor I did the checkout dives with thought that was a great idea and they both took the time to say how much I had improved and that they were sure I was going to make it through that first dive with no problems.
