LET THE
NIGHTMARES
BEGIN . . .
Ever had a dive trip when just about everything seemed to go wrong? Sure you have. Almost every diver has at least one incident they would prefer to forget. Some are hilarious, some downright dangerous. Dave Gwyer tracked down some divers who were prepared to talk - but first he gets the ball rolling with an unpleasant experience of his own...
Cold, sick and tanked up
David Gwyer
"We had organised a trip to dive in the tropical shark tank at Great Yarmouth Sea Life Cene. I'd always wanted to dive with sharks but could never afford to go abroad, so I was delighted when the centre agreed to allow us into the tanks as long as we did some maintenance work and took pictures for them.
"On that morning I woke up suffering from an appalling stomach bug, but because the trip had taken months to arrange, there was no way I could back out.
"Our plan was to dive in all the tanks, take some photographs and finish in the shark tank, and I was really looking forward to it. I made the two-hour drive with another photographer and we arranged to meet the others at 9am on a freezing winter morning.
"They arrived two hours late. One had forgotten a cylinder and they couldn't find the extra flashguns they'd agreed to bring.
"We rushed to get ready. I kitted up, fearing the consequences of hard coughing, and went into the conger tank. We lowered a ladder into the tank, and as I stepped below the surface freezing water poured into my suit. The top two inches of my suit zip had parted and I was drenched.
"Although I felt sick and was freezing, I climbed out, sorted out my zip and decided to try again. I lay shivering on the bottom of the tank and pointed my camera housing at the conger. Nothing happened. In my haste to get into the water, I'd wrongly set the controls on my camera. I had to resurface, dekit, sort out the camera and try again.
"I went down a third time and took a few shots but it was so gloomy my camera found it impossible to focus, and I cursed the fact that the others had forgotten the extra lighting. The pictures later turned out to be lousy.
"After an hour, I could take no more. My teeth chattered, I could not stop shivering and I was suffering from terrible stomach cramps and decided to stop. The other two saw their chance, borrowed my cylinder and left me shivering in my damp clothes outside the shark tank, as they enjoyed themselves diving with those beautiful sharks.
"If I ever go to the centre again, it'll be with a different set of buddies."
Narked out of my box
Colin Taylor
"I was with my buddy Frank and another diver and we were diving the Avalanche, which lies at 52m, about 20 miles off Port-land Bill. We started to go down the shot and I was not happy to start with, but I settled down and got to the bottom where, with a torch, I could see two to three metres.
"Our shot had fallen into a hole. Frank gave a 'stay there' signal and the next thing I know I am on the shot looking at the gauge, and I have no idea how I got there. I reckon I must have lost two minutes of the dive.
"Frank immediately came up the shotline and found me there. He was shaking his fist at me, and I couldn't work out why he was doing that - I was probably narked out of my box.
"I must have been at 30m when they caught up with me. I must have done all the right things - but I just couldn't remember doing them."
Mind me air!
Roger Harding
"We set off in the club's hardboat for Lundy Island. On board were a couple of visitors, Dick and Nicki, who wanted a dive. They were both relatively inexperienced, having done no more than a couple of open-water dives each, and as one of the more experienced divers I buddied with Nicki.
"All went well, and we were looking for our second dive of the day on the wreck of the Robert at 24m. We kitted up and, noticing that I had a small leak from my first stage, I turned my air off, intending to turn it on before I hit the water.
"At the dive site, I asked the nearest person, who happened to be Dick, to turn my air on. I took a quick breath and tumbled over the side.
"About 6m down, my valve got very tight. Unable to put air into my suit or jacket, I found myself on top of the wreck but had no air to breathe.
"I looked up the shot for Nicki and gave a beautifully exaggerated 'out of air' signal and pointed to my cylinder, giving a 'turn it on' twist of the wrist. She disappeared behind me and then reappeared, shrugging as if to say 'I can't turn it on'.
"I reached for her octopus and she fell backwards over the wreck and disappeared from sight. That's when I headed straight for the surface. I never thought feeling the sun on my face and breathing fresh air could be so wonderful.
"Who was to blame for this incident? Well, I put my hand up to it. I should have looked at my contents gauge as I took that first breath - the flicker of the needle would have told me that it had been turned off, then back on a quarter turn.
"I should also have asked someone with greater knowledge to turn me on. Nicki, in her panic, had turned it off completely! I am a better, safe diver because of this incident. You won't catch me diving without my pony now. I fill my emergency cylinder every dive and I'm careful to check my contents gauge before every dive."
I was mugged by a lobster
Mick Gee
"We were on a wreck off Normandy when I saw a huge lobster in a hole and signalled that I was going for it.
"As I put my arm into the hole, it bit my thumb. I wrenched my arm out, then put it back in and it grabbed me again.
"I pulled my arm out and tried again. The left claw grabbed my thumb, and when I pulled my hand out of the hole my computer fell off and the lobster grabbed it and took it back into the hole.
"I had to reach back into the hole, break the lobster's claw off and grab my computer back."
"I decided to do a buddy check, and saw that my buddy was lying on his back, so I gave him the OK signal and he signalled to surface.
"As we did our stops I could see that there were tears coming down his face. When we were back on the boat I asked if he was OK. He said he had had to come up because he was laughing so much
"I have poor eyesight and had had a special lens put on my computer so I could read it, but the lobster got that. So the joke going around was that we were looking for a one-armed French lobster with a monocle!"
I get to fight the angler
Keith Holman
"I was a new boy, and was told that you could see flatfish lying in the sand. I could see this outline in the sand so I put my knife into it and started running my hand down the fish, but my hand just kept going back and back and back and I suddenly realised that it was a huge fish.
"Then, all of a sudden, it just came at me from the gravel! My knife was attached to me so I couldn't let it go, and I couldn't get my knife free. Afterwards my buddy, Rory, said it was like watching a cartoon, because all you could see was this whirlwind of mud with a hand and a fin sticking out.
"It scared the shit out of me! This thing was massive. It was all over me and I couldn't get my arm around it.
"All of a sudden I got my knife out and it swam off before settling down a couple of yards away.
"We thought we couldn't leave it injured and went over to finish it off. Rory tried to catch it with a crab hook, but it just opened its mouth and swallowed it!
"Then it swam off to the left - and we decided to swim off to the right."
My wife's rusty teeth
Roy Davidson
"My wife was diving with another club member, and I noticed her changing from her first reg to her alternative one. She was upside-down, looking under a rock, and when she turned up the right way, I saw what looked like sand coming out of the exhaust. When we surfaced, she told me her air flow was intermittent.
"She noticed that the see-through part of the second stage looked a little rusty, and when she took her first stage off she saw a rust-coloured paste around the filter of the first stage. When we looked closer, we noticed that she had rust-coloured teeth!
"When we turned the cylinder upside down and opened the valve, a fountain of rust-coloured water poured out. It was frightening, because it made you wonder what could have happened on a deeper dive. In 25 years, I have never seen anything that bad."
Too fast for my own good
Lynne Gale
"We were diving off Flamborough Head from a small inflatable. It was a lovely day and we had two people manning the boat and another two people diving with us.
"We made a miscalculation about the dive. We knew there would be a slight drift, but when we got down it was a good five-knot drift. Four of us went in together and my buddy and I stayed close to the bottom and drifted together. The other two aborted straight away.
"We didn't have SMBs, and the cox lost our bubbles when helping the other two out of the water. We were having a really exciting drift dive. Rocks were coming out of nowhere and we had our hands in front of our faces so we didn't get hit by them.
"We continued for about half an hour and then made the decision to come up - but we couldn't see the boat because it had gone past us.
"It was very calm, and after a while we spotted the boat as a tiny speck in the distance. We were calling to them and after a while they heard us but couldn't see us. Several other boats passed close by, but we couldn't attract their attention.
"After over half an hour - which seemed a hell of a long time - they were getting worried and were asking other boats to keep an eye open for us. Eventually they spotted us, and I was incredibly relieved when we saw them coming for us.
"Now I never do a drift dive without an SMB and we both carry whistles and have delayed SMBs in our stabs."
How I nearly lost Prince Charles
Don Bullivant
"I'm a member of Mary Rose BSAC 551, the team that found the Mary Rose, and was there when Prince Charles came out on site with his bodyguard and a doctor.
"It was a beautiful day - flat calm, with good visibility. Alexander McKee went down with Prince Charles with two divers as cover. I went down with his bodyguard, who found some pottery.
"When we came back on deck, Prince Charles saw the pottery and wanted to find his own. I was already rigged up, so I took him down and showed him how to use an airlift. When we were on the seabed, I indicated to him to stay where he was while I adjusted the airlift. I turned round, and saw his fins disappearing into the murk.
"I had to tear after him with a thumping heart, thinking: 'I'm going to lose him! What do they do to people who lose a prince in the Solent?' I think I might still be in the Tower of London now if I hadn't eventually grabbed his fins and pulled him back.
"We played several tricks on him, like pinching his underpants and stealing his watch [not under water, we hope], which went down really well. He loved it. In fact the Prince and his bodyguard had such a good time that the bodyguard forgot his revolver in the wheelhouse as they returned ashore. Only quick thinking by the crew prevented them from driving off without it!"
I couldn't see a way out
Kevan Cook
"We were in Scotland diving the Port Napier, a minesweeper lying in 0-30m off the Isle of Skye. We talked to the local dive club and were told it was a good dive, and a local fisherman said he would take us.
"The wreck lies bow to shore. We jumped in and went down the wreck to 25m, turned around and then followed the hull back up to the surface. She's lying on her
side, and as we worked up the side we could see into the
ship, where some plates had come away, through to the other side.
"I motioned to my buddy Gary that we should go inside. Because the viz was good I didn't use a lazy line, but as we went into the wreck, we kicked up the silt and the viz went from 7m down to nothing in about 15 seconds.
"We couldn't see our way out, and we just sat there waiting for the silt to settle and the viz to clear. Then Gary decided to find a way out and swam around looking for an exit, but that made matters worse, and I lost him.
"Viz was nil, and I just sat there waiting for it to clear. Eventually I could see a glimmer of light and I frantically swam to the
surface. Fortunately, Gary was already there - it certainly was a bit tense for both of us.
"Our dive planning was at fault because
we hadn't planned to go inside the wreck, so we should not have done. We were not equipped for wreck penetration. They always say 'plan your dive, dive your plan' - and we did neither."
I don't drink and dive anymore
Andrew Eade
"We'd been on an underwater photography course in Gozo. The weekend fell in the middle of the trip, and a few of us ended up in a nightclub until 5am. We'd already decided to scrap the following morning's dive and rest, rehydrate and dive late afternoon.
"The dive site was the Rozi wreck, which lies in a sandy bay off Malta at about 40m. Unusually, the boat ride from Gozo to the site was very bumpy because a considerable swell had built up, and when we tried to stop near the site we found it difficult to manoeuvre on the boat without falling over.
"We were unable to enter the water on the first pass because it was too choppy. The drift was too severe, as well, and we would have washed out into the ferry lane.
"We got in on a second pass but the skipper made it clear that we should descend as quickly as possible to avoid being swept right over the wreck. He promised that the current would be negligible nearer the bottom.
"I wasn't sure about this dive at all, because deep wreck dives normally originate from a shotline. We had nothing. In the fracas on board, the exit point was not made clear and I wasn't sure where we'd be picked up when we surfaced.
"As we dropped over the side, the current grabbed us immediately and we quickly drifted away from the boat. My buddy and I signalled to descend, but at 6m we both experienced ear-clearing problems.
"We hovered at 6m for a minute or two and as our ears cleared we redescended, but by this time we were a good 50-60m from the wreck, which we could see clearly looming in the distance with the rest of our group scrambling all over it with their camera strobes firing.
"My buddy and I now had a long swim against a strong current to a wreck at 40m. I was exhausted, almost unable to catch my breath.
"I was beginning to feel narked, and I hid from the current in the structure of the wreck, managed to take a few pictures, then signalled to resurface way before we had planned. The long swim had ruined our plan anyway; times and gas consumption had been thrown out by this and the protracted time at 6m.
"I thought the skipper was to pick us up at the entry point, another 50m swim against the tide, so we began to swim but gave up after a minute or two. I was now becoming agitated and had the feeling that things were going desperately wrong.
"We started to ascend and drift with the tide, so I sent up an SMB at 20m. My arm was nearly wrenched out of its socket as the surface rip caught the SMB, dragging us quickly towards a rocky reef and shallow water at an alarming rate.
"We managed to hang onto rocks to carry out the deco stops required, but on surfacing were dashed over the surface of the reef. As we popped up, the boat was there, anchored to the same reef that had been mincing us to bits.
"We learned several lessons. With the sea conditions, we should not have gone in the water. When our ears played up, we should have surfaced.
"The dive brief given by the skipper should have been clearer: the group surfaced all over the place, as they weren't sure where they should have been.
"There should have been a shotline to the wreck - and I needed to be fitter. We shouldn't have tried such a challenging dive after a night of drinking and clubbing !"
Driving under water is a bad idea
Chris Rojek
"I was with three other members of our club when we arrived at Trimingham and found that a front tyre of our club tractor had a three-inch gash in it.
"Rather than miss our dive, we decided to 'borrow' another club's tractor - they would call it hot-wiring - that was parked next to ours. Running late to catch slack water, we launched the RIB and raced to the wreck of the British Triumph, lying at 30m about ten miles from shore.
"Unfortunately two heavily tattooed anglers were fishing over the wreck and warned us: 'You can't dive here - we were here first!'
"We took the hint, moved 100m uptide and dropped our shotline on another mark on the sounder. There was just one problem - it wasn't on a wreck. Two divers went down to spend 25 minutes on the seabed looking for one.
"The second pair went overboard, but the tide was running too strong and they couldn't reach the shotline, even after being towed by the boat.
"We raced back to shore and decided to make another dive on the 6pm slack. Bad mistake. The beach was deserted and the tide was at spring low water when - aaargh! - the tractor and trailer became stuck in the sand.
"We heaved the RIB off the trailer, but just couldn't get the tractor off the beach - and the tide was rising fast. Within half an hour the sea was lapping round the engine, and an hour after that the tractor was under 3ft of water and a seal was spotted swimming around the exhaust!
"Now we had another problem - where could we moor our RIB? The shore was too exposed, and the high tide would smash it against the beach!
"There was only one solution. A buddy and I decided to race over 20 miles round the coast and moor the boat at Wells, while the others drove round to pick us up.
"The next day we returned and hauled our tractor out, with the help of two tractors from Norwich BSAC, before stripping and cleaning it.
"The four of us had to explain what had happened at our club's committee meeting the next night. One diver said: 'The only good thing about the weekend was that as I was standing on Wells quayside in my underpants, a woman walked past and commented: 'Nice arse!'"
I was that buddy from hell
Louise Trewavas
"My BSAC branch was diving the Salsette out of Weymouth at about 47m. The Diving Officer was obviously in a quirky mood, and instead of my usual dive buddy, had put me with Nigel, who unfortunately had de-cided that since I was less experienced, he needed to take me in hand and lead the dive.
"We were both diving on computers, and agreed that we'd do about 25 minutes of decompression. I was diving with my twinset, and even without a weightbelt I was negatively buoyant. We exchanged OK signals on the surface and, eager to get on with the dive, I dumped all my air and flew down the shotline.
"Unfortunately Nigel wasn't quite used to this approach and, having lost sight of me at about 15m, had decided that I must have had a problem and ascended. He spent several confused minutes asking other pairs of divers if they'd seen me before realising that I must be on the wreck. It was only three minutes into the dive, and I'd already unnerved him.
"Meanwhile I was sprawled casually on the wreck, cheerfully narked and singing the Teletubbies theme tune to a blenny. Nigel arrived and exchanged some rather frenzied OK signals before we set off to explore the wreck.
"The Salsette is huge, and getting inside proved easy, as there are several large breaks in the hull. However the part that we entered didn't have that much to see and it was fairly silty, so I indicated to Nigel that I wanted to go back out.
"I picked what seemed to be a perfectly decent-sized hole and, forgetting that I was wearing two large cylinders, wedged myself into it. Nigel was stuck behind me inside the wreck while I thrashed about, stirring up the silt and drastically reducing the visibility. He briefly considered getting out his crowbar, but decided instead to grab me by the arse and drag me back inside the wreck.
"It had only just about occurred to me that I wasn't going anywhere, when suddenly I was going backwards fast. I was too busy laughing to realise that my buddy was getting stressed by my antics.
"Outside the wreck, we were happily pootling along when Nigel decided to check on the deco situation and asked me what my computer was saying.
"My own computer was being repaired and I'd borrowed an ancient Suunto from a friend, failing to realise that if it clocked up 20 minutes of deco it assumed you were dead and went into 'Error' mode.
"So I looked down at my wrist. The computer said 'Error', I thought cheerfully, and I showed it to Nigel.
His eyes got so large they were practically sticking to the front of his mask. The poor man naturally assumed that I must have done something seriously provocative to screw up the computer, and had visions of being airlifted off to the pot imminently.
"Meanwhile I spotted an intact porthole and was heading off along the wreck when he grabbed my arse again. I gave Nigel a playful swipe that knocked him on his back and made a helluva nasty clang as his cylinder hit the hull and left him winded.
"It was only then that I realised that he was waving both thumbs in the air because he wanted to ascend - now! Strangely enough, he has never dived with me since!"
Have you had a deeply embarrassing diving experience that you feel ready to share with the rest of the diving community?
Write to us at Diver, 55 High Street, Teddington, Middlesex TW11 8HA, fax 0181 943 4312 or e-mail editor@divernet.com.
You could find yourself starring in Dive Nightmares II: Cold Sweat. And don't worry - we'll understand!
Appeared in DIVER - March 1999
