diving mishaps

[shamre]

Opening a thread for divers to tell their stupid mishaps or mistakes they have made while diving. The reason for this is so that we can learn from them. And since it is hard to swallow pride i will start off.

Was doing a two tank dive on the madeira and at end of day took our tanks to be filled. since we were only going to do one dive the next day i only took one tank to fill. The next day i hooked up my gear and trucked it all down to the beach and was ready to get in when i looked at my psi gauge and showed 600 psi. whoops! The moral of this story is, if you have a long trek to the dive site, get your gear all setup and check your gauges and gear out before you make the trek down to the dive site. Now this wasn't a critical error but more of an inconvenience, it was my first time diving the madeira and i was excited and forgot to check my air level at the car.

Other stories...............

[angela_a]

I think the thread is an excellent idea, though I suspect that most mishaps are essentially absentminded *oversights* :

My most expensive mishap was forgetting a new pair of very spendy fins at Wazee following my certifying AOW dives (obvious lesson: check to be sure you've taken all your eqipment!).

A most unfortunate mishap: I was working as a dive guide in Thailand, and had one glorious day of recreational diving with a divemaster-in-training. The first dive of the day was a small wreck not far from Phuket. We descended to 30-35M to do a little treasure-hunting, but unfortunately, when we arrived at depth, I learned my buddy had barely enough air to make it back to the safety stop. Needless to say, the dive was finished.

I'd love to pin this mishap on my buddy, but as his buddy, it was my responsibility to do a THOROUGH buddy check. I assumed, because he was a divemaster-in-training, he would have performed a check on his own equipment. So, I learned never to assume (!!!) and how important a buddy check is!!

[LKunze]

Well my mishap is well documented here in previous threads from last year but I lost one of my Turtle fins in Lake Superior at the Hesper wreck site. Jason Baker and I were all geared up and in the water for our first dive on a Friday afternoon. The surge coming in took me by surprise and slammed me into the rocks and I dropped a fin. The fin got sucked into a little cave-like crevice in the breakwall and I couldn't reach it. Since I didn't bring any extra fins with and needed fins with large footpockets to accomadate my Rockboots which the shops in Duluth didn't have, I was left with no choice but to drive all the way back to the twin cities and grab my extra fins and then drive all the way back up. So the first day of diving was scrapped for what ended up being about 12 hours in all on the road that day. :-[

[Omicron]

Here's a bit of a mishap...not underwater...but diving related.

I met up w/ a friend at Redgranite quarry last weekend to do some diving. He was having some problems w/ the plug on his battery for his canister light - the wire was becoming frayed and was only hanging on by a thread. I told him I'd bring my soldering iron and some solder along so he could fix it. I had his spare battery and canister at my house, so I brought that along too so that he'd have a plug he could cut off of one battery and put onto the other.

So we showed up, plugged the soldering iron into the inverter and let it warm up. He ended up cutting the plug off of the backup battery charger as that one was easier to replace. He soldered the plug onto the battery, red to red, black to black. Let the solder cool, taped it up and plugged it in.

He flipped on his HID light aaaaannd...nothing. Turned it off, flipped it on. Nothing. He figured maybe his light head was goofy, so he asked if he could hook mine up. I told him no problem and disconnected my light head and handed it over. He plugged it in and.....nothing again.

About that same time, I asked him about polarity. One thing about HID light heads, is that the ballast doesn't deal well with reverse polarity. One could say that it deals with reverse polarity about as well as an ice cube deals with a flame thrower. In other words, it'll take it for about 1 second before it fries.

He double checked the solder job and he did indeed have red to red, black to black...but...because he took the plug from the charger instead of another battery, the wires coming off of the replacement plug were actually reversed from the battery. So while everything looked good on the solder job, when you actually plugged it into the light head you had red to black and black to red.

So..not just one...but two HID light heads were toast! They are now en-route to Dive Rite for replacement.

The moral of the story? Hrm. Always check polarity!! And, if you are really intent on trashing some gear, try not to involve anyone elses in the deal - stick to your own ;D

The upside of the story is that Dive Rite said they would bring our light heads up to "production standards" when they rebuilt them, so new switches/boots/glands/o-rings and all that good stuff.

As far as things I've done? There was one of my first dives, using my friends BC. You had to get REALLY upright to dump air from the inflator hose. I wasn't getting upright enough to dump, and I was getting pretty buoyant, at about 55 feet. So there I am, arms wrapped around a tree, waving "bye-bye" to my dive partner (the same one, incidentally, that nuked the light heads)...just as I was going to let go of the branch he got me in the right position to get some air out so I could sink again!

[MNLakeDiver]

soon after my OW calss I was diving using barrowed gear. a wetsuit that was too small to zip all the way a backplate and wings and weightbelt. I am a larg diver at the time I weighd about 315 and a new diver. so of course I was overweighted.
the dive was going fine untill we went down to 35' then the wetsuit zipper started to slide down. while tring to fix that my weight belt sliped from my hips. I was able to catch it with my feet but then I went stupid. can anyone guess waht hapens to a inexperanced diver who grabs a 45 # weight belt off his legs? if you guessed he hangs upsidedown wondering how that hapened you win. luckly there was a class going on and one of there DMs saw me and was able to contain himself enugh to help me right myself while my buddie helped me fix my belt. I was told with the white of my chest showing through the unziping wetsuit I looked like Shamoo doing a headstand

[jasondbaker]

I haven't experienced any "light at the end of the tunnel" moments in diving yet. But I have encountered a variety of equipment, environment, mental, and buddy malfunctions.

I was doing a dive on the Willy in Lake Michigan last summer. We had some moderate waves to contend with so we decided to enter the water and decend as quickly as possible. I geared up and performed a giant stride. As soon as I hit the water I began to decend. I soon realized that I failed to properly tuck my mask skirt under my hood. So I'm racing down towards the ship while my mask is filling with water. I'm breathing a little harder, fighting to establish some boyancy, and screwing around with my mask skirt. By the time I got to the deck of the ship my mask was completely full and my buddy was trying to figure out what the heck I was doing. My buddy quickly helped me sort out the problem. I was humbled.

One other funny story about losing gear at Wazee. When I first got OW certified I bought myself a cool Casio DEEP dive watch. I really liked this watch. I took it out to Wazee with me during my AOW. After the last dive I took off my watch and set it on the back bumper of my Jeep.

I placed an order for a replacement watch the next day.

[DanL]

Shortly after getting certified, I took a drysuit course. Went down to 65ft and in less than 10 min on one of the qualification dives had a freeflow on the used reg I purchased. I learned a number of things:
1. My buddy was just a few feet ahead, but he had no idea what happened. No eyes in the back of his head.
2. I took the reg out of my mouth and slapped it on my hand, hoping to stop the freeflow. Just a reflex reaction, but totally pointless and useless.
3. Viz went to absolute zero. I was in a sea of air bubbles - no way to see gauges. Depth and tank pressure were a total unknown.
4. I surfaced quickly and without injury to find that I had well over 1000psi remaining - a freeflow doesn't empty your tank immediately.
5. BUY THE BEST COLD WATER REG AVAILABLE, WHETHER YOU THINK YOU CAN AFFORD IT OR NOT.

[gerlinan]

After not diving for about 3 months I made my way down to the FL Keys and had a night dive planned for my first dive. At the time this seemed like a good idea...get there and go go diving ASAP. In the key the boat ride out to the dive sites is about 45 minutes. 45 minutes in very rough seas this time. I began the dive with my new dive light (I won't say which brand) and about 5 minutes into the dive it flooded and went dark. As luck would have it my buddy was close and I stuck by her for the rest of the dive. I was also grossly underweighted we ended up calling the dive after about 5 more minutes. Morals of this story...HAVE A BACK-UP LIGHT and know what weight you need. I will never again plan a night dive as my first dive at an unknow location for my first dive after traveling all day. Happy Diving!

[DiveCaptDean]

Personally, i havent had much happen to me that is worth talking about, but do have a story to share.
My wife is also a diver, albeit not an avid one, but she does go out once in a while locally. I took her to Wazee two years ago to do a couple of dives. At this time, she had maybe three dives since buying her all new gear. We entered the water and dropped down to 40ft and cruised the wall a little..it wasnt a bad dive. The dive ended...my wife happy with her dive placed her mask up on her forehead ( NONO) and proceeded to swim back towards the ramp...of course, her mask did not make it with her. She was hovering over the 100 ft shelf, and down the mask went. I did drop down to look, but found nothing in my short time down there. I called it a loss, and on our surface interval, we went to the dive shop there and picked her up a new mask. She felt a little foolish as i POLITELY educated her on the proper stowage of a mask. Arguments ended.....second dive began...Once again, a nice wall dive..not deep, but nice..at the end of the dive, my wife again placed her mask on her forehead as we swam back toward the exit. I mildly scolded..she politely told me to F off in her own little way. I exited..she lollygagged a little them i found out why.....She lost her mask again......
It was a quiet 3 hr ride back to milwuakee.
Happy diving
Deano

[tim]

Last fall went to do a dive on the Wilson in Duluth. We took a small zodiac out to the site, with 4 divers we decided to gear up in the water. As I was strugling to find my waist strap I grabed one of my weight pockets and pulled. I realized that it wasn't the strap and let go before i realized what it was. Feeling pretty stupid that i am going to miss a dive I had realy been looking forward to we found a chunk of lead on the boat. Even luckier ont of the ohter divers found my weight pouch.

Moral of the story? Probably ask for help when having trouble.

Tim