Hels - 10/07/2008 5:46 AM
The scariest thing about possibly pegging it under water is that you can’t have that last cigarette.
Diving the blue hole in Gozo (Malta) earlier this year with a small group of O/W divers and 6 others with various levels of experience. One of the O/W divers didn’t enjoy the swim-thrus and overheads on the 1st dive, so, fair enough, the Instructor made the 2nd dive with NO swimthrus. He explained the dive well and we all checked the maps out, bearings etc. Everyone’s happy. So me and my German buddy are at the rear of the group poking about on a wall checking out the spiny-assed lobsters crouching in their holes. All good. Unbeknown to me - an contrary to the dive plan - my buddy has followed the group thru this narrow swim-thru overhead chimney thing. I think shes jus poking around in what is a little cave. She doesn’t come out. Fun Fun...
One other dive pair have also not gone thru the chimney and im hanging at 25m half an eye on the "cave" waiting for me buddy and half an eye watching the last pairs’ fins disappear into the blue (visiblity was about 15m). Rite decision time - I’ve shone me torch trying to get my buddy’s attention, tapped my tank, stuck my head in this bloody "cave" and she’s not effin there. At this point i feel a tiny flicker of "oh shiiiiiiit" but quash it straight away and decide to follow the fins and bubbles i can see rather than go into some dark cravasse.
I manage to catch up with the last pair after a couple minutes swim with only the sound of my reg (not that scary really - more scary if it shuts up). I go 3s up with them and we go back to the cave thing.
Turns out the Instructor had ballsed it up. He had taken the group thru an overhead - which freaked out the O/W diver who didn’t want to do them; one person was on dregs of air by the time we surfaced and he managed to lose 3 divers thru cruddy dive planning.
Lesson learnt: never trust a dive plan that you’re not involved in making and always take a bloody compass.