Whats your worst diving mistake,and can you admit it? - NHZ

[Jeff Pack]

Do divers have such big ego's and cant admit their mistakes?

Does what happens (mistakes) between buddies diving always stay private?

I was lamenting this last night when I was told by someone my dive whor'in post at Les Davis was viewed as trashing a fellow diver. And that such things should be private.

So I thought about that hard last night, and recently on nwdc we've been sharing some recent mistakes and events, so that others may learn from them.

So I thought hey, are we all such big ego's we cant admit our mistakes, so others can learn from them?

So I thought I'd start with what I call my worst dive mistake since getting recertified in October.


This was my first boat dive, and my second dive after getting my OW cert. It was with Cindy Ross and some others I now dont recall.

Was my first lesson how my military training doesnt often translate well to recreational diving.

We were on our second dive, and midway, perhaps abit later, I corked (no surprise). Now in true military fashion, I would have laid low, surveyed the area for detection, and quickly dropped. At least I did signal to the boat I was ok, but then I just hit back down to the bottom,and signaled.

Not finding the team (or the group of divers), is where I made Jeff's very stupid mistake #122.4. I decided, heck, I'm down there, they arent looking for me or waiting, so I kept on diving. Upon surfacing close to low air, I found the boat, and boarded. At that point, I knew (without anyone saying anything) how stupid I'd been. Even beyond stupid, it was selfish, ignorant, and thoughtless.

Cindy, bless her heart, could have chewed me a new one, and didnt. She instead recounted a story that didnt really strike home to me until now. She recounted losing a diver, the lost diver thoughts you go through, what went through her head, etc.

Its a common used phrase to tell someone "I understand what you are feeling", but this is a prime example that you can never know what someone is feeling, until you feel it yourself. And for that CIndy (hopefully you read this) I am profoundly sorry, and never really realized exactly what you went through. Now I do.

Thats Jeff's stupid mistake.


But if you are going to post your mistake, you also have to post what you learned from it.

This hammered home to me lost buddy protocol. And the times since, I have followed it 100%.

Who's next?

[spatman]

here's a few stories from the same idea a few years ago:

When good dives go BAD! Lessons Learned?

[Jeff Pack]

here's a few stories from the same idea a few years ago:

When good dives go BAD! Lessons Learned?

thx, good reading

[CaptnJack]

here's a few stories from the same idea a few years ago:

When good dives go BAD! Lessons Learned?

Yah I was gonna say this path sounds familar....

My worst dive here:
http://www.nwdiveclub.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=12281

If you can't quite read between the lines... it scared the crap outa us being in near freezing zero vis water with only a wisp of #18 twisted line between us and complete overhead environment disaster.

[LCF]

My goodness, I have so many . . . I've shared some of them here, and some on ScubaBoard. One of the ones I still feel ashamed about was a dive off a charter on the Possession Point Ferry. The captain had asked us to look at the position of the anchor, and if it was caught in the wreckage, to move it a little away so that he'd be able to retrieve it. We had two teams in the water, one team of three pretty experienced folks, and one team of two relatively novice people. The 3 man team, of which I was one, went down first. We did our dive, and came back to the anchor, which was, in fact, in the middle of a bunch of wreckage. So we moved it.

Peter's mistake was to move the anchor using his wing for lift; this is inadvisable, because if you drop the weight, you're suddenly doing a Polaris missile imitation. Luckily, he didn't drop it, but we talked about this later.

But our whole team error, for which I feel quite responsible, was that we moved the anchor while the other team was still on the wreck. It was, actually, still visible from the point where it had been, but only if you looked for it. In fact, the other team came back and just weren't sure they were in the right place, so they spent bottom time searching, found an upline (that wasn't ours) and ascended on it -- but it ended halfway to the surface, so they had to do a free ascent the last part of the way, and ended up a LONG way from the boat, which none of us expected. It was really kind of luck that we spotted them before they were just too far away to see.

That was a big mistake, and I still feel bad about it, although everyone made it home okay.

(I have to say, in the spirit of the original post, that I do prefer ME sharing my mistakes, to other people telling stories about them )

[limeyx]

here's a few stories from the same idea a few years ago:

When good dives go BAD! Lessons Learned?

Yah I was gonna say this path sounds familar....

My worst dive here:
http://www.nwdiveclub.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=12281

If you can't quite read between the lines... it scared the crap outa us being in near freezing zero vis water with only a wisp of #18 twisted line between us and complete overhead environment disaster.

Wuss.
Hey! Just how many of your "worst dives" have I been present on I wonder ?

Me, I've never made a mistake I will admit to.
Never
- had my tank on backwards! (so the DIN valve faced the wrong way)
- Wing on backwards
- LP wing hose not hooked up
- brought my wetsuit fins for a drysuit dive (straps were way too loose and couldnt kick)
- On ascent from a dive to 270, go for the 70 foot bottle, see my buddy's eyes go wide as saucers and realize I forgot to "write the MOD stickers" on it on the boat the previous night ... thanks god the analysis was done and the analysis tape was readable ....

Too many more to count....

[Dmitchell]

24 years of diving, I have tons of them.

The worst was probably getting lost under the ice in the harbor a couple years ago. Was working on a leaking water line and the only opening for 100 yards was where the water was leaking.

Then there was the time I got hung up in the seine net again by myself.

The time we as teenagers were being sneaky and took gear from the shop to dive in the local lake in shorts and t-shirts. Yea, that was almost hypothermia!

Touching something under a cruise ship and getting the #@$#@ shocked out of me..

And so on and so fourth!

[60south]

24 years of diving, I have tons of them.

Ha. Moi, 27 years. Got you beat, and maybe I have made more mistakes! (Uh, I'm competing to prove I've made more mistakes than someone else?)

I know most of you haven't met me (yet), but at least Dusty can see me grinning and wincing...

Sometimes it's the simple, boneheaded things that make you go D'oh! Back in 'the day' I was practicing in a public pool. Fun, relaxing. What could possibly go wrong? There was a kid with a mask snorkeling down to see me and another diver. I thought he might like to try scuba, so I offered him my octo. To this day I am thankful he refused the offer.

[eliseaboo]

Jeff - I think the issue was with the way the story was told. It had a bit of an air of "my buddy should have done __" to it. I'm sure that was unintentional, and I'm not trying to get on your case about it, I'm just offering another perspective. I don't think anyone is against sharing mistakes and lessons.

Chris - I'd still dive with you, if I could catch you on that scooter :P

Mostly my mistakes have been on the surface. Ask me about my dive boots, or my weight belt, or my mask, or......

I've had dives where I got extraordinarily complacent too, just in general. Shooting photos isn't always conducive to checking your gauges enough, or keeping a close eye on your buddy, or even navigating properly. In the Bahamas my buddy and I botched our natural navigation very badly and surfaced a good football field away from the boat, at least...at dusk...as the team with the best air consumption thus the longest bottom time...as the divemaster was helping us out of our gear he just says "yeeaaah, we usually prefer if people *don't* surface so far from the boat at night..." To which, of course, we responded "yeah...us too!"

[Jeff Pack]

Jeff - I think the issue was with the way the story was told. It had a bit of an air of "my buddy should have done __" to it. I'm sure that was unintentional, and I'm not trying to get on your case about it, I'm just offering another perspective. I don't think anyone is against sharing mistakes and lessons.

Hmm, I tried to keep it at the facts, but appreciate your perspective.

But on the other hand, I know what i should have done too, and thats not get seperated. And the blame for that falls soley on me. It was me getting floaty that caused it. And I need to really learn how to get that last air thats trapped down at my feet out.

[Diver_Dave]

If u don't make mistakes u never learn anything.....

[LCF]

I think it's really kind of a shame to see this thread deteriorate into banter . . . sharing mistakes is a great way to share knowledge learned through painful experience. I thought this was a very good topic for a thread.

[spatman]

I think it's really kind of a shame to see this thread deteriorate into banter . . . sharing mistakes is a great way to share knowledge learned through painful experience. I thought this was a very good topic for a thread.

You are right, Lynne. When I get back in front of my computer, I'll split the off topic posts into another thread.

*UPDATE*

Thread has been cleaned up and is now a NHZ.

Off topic posts have been moved here:
http://www.nwdiveclub.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=17932

[Mateo1147]

I will admit my worst mistake. I was on a solo dive and had to start using my redundant gas supply because I failed to heed my own turn pressure. I wasn't out of primary gas but I was saving the last couple hundred pounds for the final ascent and safety stop.
I learned a couple good lessons that day:
1. Narcosis is dangerous. It can affect your judgment.
2. You can never have too much gas along on a dive.

[nwbobber]

My worst mistake happened a long time ago when most did not have octos ( backup regs). At the time, my buddy and I, had the j valve setup that reserves 300-500 psi if the little lever is in the up position, no spg's, and on this dive my buddies lever was NOT in the up position due to some inattention from HIS buddy (me). So when he noticed the air was coming harder, tries to pull down the lever, and realizes he is out of gas, he comes at me slashing his hand across his throat. I grab my second stage and hand it to him, rolling it over as I do, and he grabs it and take a hard suck of half water/half air due to the second stage being upside down. Now coughing he lights out for the surface at mach 5, kicking me in the face with each kick, because we were tied together with something they used to call a buddy line, which I would also put in the mistake category.

Everyone was OK. I now will hand you my primary by the hose the same way every time, if you need it. I will not ever dive without an spg, nor will I dive with anyone who doesn't have one. OOG emergencies are no fun, for anyone involved. Backup regulators are also a nice touch. The buddy line? This was part of a class. That's the way we were being taught. It was still a mistake to tie it to your body. If you are in zero vis and need an aid to stay together, hold it in your hand so you can let go of it when you need to.

[60south]

Do divers have such big ego's and cant admit their mistakes?

I usually know when I have screwed up badly and I'm not afraid to admit it. The concern about posting here (and others have mentioned this too) is that we may be judged by others, even if that is not the intent of the thread, and once anything's posted on the Internet it's out there forever. Some of my screw-ups have been so ugly that I simply won't post them publically, even though others might find them educational and entertaining (in a morbid, there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I sort of way).

My hunch is that if there was a good way to post anonymously, THEN you'd get some great stories. Just sayin'.

[CaptnJack]

Then there's the "by the grace of god" stories we occasionally here and sometimes what can you say for all the head shaking... Some people get it right away, some people takes awhile and a few eff ups, some people never get it.

On at least one other board you can submit eff ups to admins and they get posted anonymously.

[Joshua Smith]

Then there's the "by the grace of god" stories we occasionally here and sometimes what can you say for all the head shaking... Some people get it right away, some people takes awhile and a few eff ups, some people never get it.

On at least one other board you can submit eff ups to admins and they get posted anonymously.

That's an interesting idea. I'll bring it up at the next staff meeting.

[CaptnJack]

Then there's the "by the grace of god" stories we occasionally here and sometimes what can you say for all the head shaking... Some people get it right away, some people takes awhile and a few eff ups, some people never get it.

On at least one other board you can submit eff ups to admins and they get posted anonymously.

That's an interesting idea. I'll bring it up at the next staff meeting.

I think its CDF where there's a whole section of accident and near miss reports. You can post there yourself or have it posted anonymously by an admin on your behalf.

[Kelvininin]

I guess I can contribute to this...

It was pretty early on, only had a hand full number of dives on my freshly minded OW cirt, first dive at Redondo.

My dive buddy / fiance has a ton more dive experience than me, likes to let me lead, and I don't mind, but we made a critical mistake. Her computer wouldn't sync with the HP transmitter and thus not function, so we bolted on a backup pressure gauge. Two people diving on one computer. We are dinking around and the dive was getting deep. Before I knew it we were at 100 ft, she wasn't aware of our depth, and I saw my pressure gauge at 1200 psig. In my inexperience I had a mini panic and bolted for the shore along the bottom, you guessed it, leaving my dive buddy in my wake. I glanced back every now and again to make sure we was still coming. But I was on a mission to make it to shore, before I supposedly ran out of gas.

In my line of work, I have learned to keep cool in exciting conditions, this is what I credit to me taking off along the bottom, instead of bolting for the surface.

We made it the safety stop and she caught up, I had plenty of gas, even after kicking at speeds one could water ski behind. She was more mad about me putting too much distance between us in case I actually did run out of gas, more than anything else.

Lessons learned. She now carries a backup computer in addition to the pressure gauge, and I carry a watch that doubles as a depth indicator, and we dive with in our certs.