ツ Scuba-Dooba-Doo!

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Me and a friend of mine just got certified as divers (this was 1984) and we’re going wreck (sunken ships) diving with a team. There was a buoy we had to swim to so we could pull ourselves down it’s chain to get to the bottom of Sequim Bay.

It was windy and the water was choppy. You’re supposed to swim out to the target on the surface breathing through a snorkel, but that was too much work, so we breathed from our tanks about 5 feet under water. Ah… So much easier and it felt like flying.

Before we go out to the buoy, my buddy got sick and started puking through his regulator. I had to take him back to shore because diving alone, means diving with death.

I did get another buddy and we went back out – but didn’t get a new tank.

I ran out of air 50 feet below the surface (I wasn’t paying attention to my gages). The problem is you can’t just swim to the surface at that depth or you will get something called the bends. If you rise to the surface too quickly at depths more than 30 feet deep, nitrogen gas could boil out of your blood. You’d have nitrogen gas in your bloodstream which could be fatal. Rather than going through that, I was breathing off another diver’s tank until we could swim to the surface. I was so scared, I almost gave up. At that moment, drowning sounded like a better option than the panic I was going through. My friend unbuckled my weight belt and I was able to get to the surface.

When I got to shore my instructor slapped me for being an idiot and almost killing myself, I had a J-valve instead of a K. I had 300 more pounds of air to consume if I had just reached behind my neck and flipped the valve.

Saw a couple killer wrecks on the bottom though. Octopus too (there was a baby one in ever bottle or can on the bay floor).

It wasn’t worth the panic of drowning. Drowning is a bad way to go. But I can admit, there is a point while it’s happening you get through it and bliss takes over while you’re telling yourself “I’m OK to go now.”