After getting certified, I did a fair amount of diving; more than twenty five dives in less than a year. I had approached scuba diving as a bucket list activity—get certified, check it off the things to do list, move on to the next. Purchasing my own gear removed the largest hurdle to continuing to dive—the hassle of renting gear, some of which I learned early on did not suit me, and running to the shop to pick it up and return it..
“I can’t find anyone to go diving with” is the often given
reason by people who don’t continue to dive.
Lack of buddies was not a problem for me living in the Santa Barbara
area. I did dives with people I knew and
a few that I did not. I joined the UCSB
Scuba Club even though I was not a student but was welcomed as if I were. Plentiful nearby shore diving sites meant
that I could wake at 7:00 a.m. and be in the water 90 minutes later. So what I
thought was going to be a “one and done” experience soon turned into an
activity that I did frequently.
My in-water skills slowly improved. Repetition reduced my awkwardness underwater.
My air consumption needed improvement, many of my dives did not exceed 30
minutes of bottom time. Early on a buddy
tagged me with the nickname “Hoover” because “I sucked air like a vacuum
cleaner.” I learned a lot by doing,
night diving, spear fishing, abalone and lobster hunting or just checking out
new locations. Some of what I learned
came from more experienced divers who did not mind being paired with a much
less experienced diver. Steve McCollough,
the assistant instructor in my certification course, showed me how to properly
identify, remove, clean and prepare abalone.
Diving from La Jolla Shores
So it was, with 20 dives in my logbook, I joined with members of the UCSB club in
mid-February to travel to San Diego. Bill,
a past member of the club, graciously invited us for a weekend of beach dives
and dives from his beach-launched zodiac inflatable boat. I took a couple of hours of vacation from
work to get an early start for the four hour drive to San Diego. Many of the club members were crashing at our
host’s house in nearby Claremont Mesa, while I was staying with my brother in
nearby Lake Murray. We planned to meet
up at the Kellogg Park beach access point adjacent to the La Jolla Shores Beach
and Tennis Club the next morning. Little
did I know that I would experience potentially disastrous consequences on my
first dive that turned out to be an epiphany!
La Jolla Shores--Saturday, February 16, 1985
Warm and sunny, clear skies, the kind of day that brings
winter weary Californians to the beach.
At this point in the calendar, the days are getting noticeably longer,
much of the winter rain has fallen, and it is starting to get warmer. A friend who worked selling memberships at a
health club in Ventura once remarked “these are the happy times. People who have put on a few holiday pounds
and lost their tan put on beachwear and are shocked when they look in the
mirror. They immediately run to join the
gym and it shows in my commission check.”
We got to the boat launch area of the beach early and wheeled
the zodiac onto the sand. The seas were nearly flat with a bit of a beach break
—ideal conditions for launching the boat.
The zodiac could only take out two divers at a time. I volunteered to do the first dive with a
UCSB student, Chad. We geared up,
dragged the boat into the water, hopped in and were soon bouncing across the
water on our way to the nearby dive site.
We got to our dive site off of La Jolla Cove. The plan was to have a look around the kelp
bed and rock reef about 60 feet below.
Chad and I completed our buddy checks, and did a back roll off opposite
sides of the boat. We popped up to the
surface, signaled the zodiac we were “OK” and started our descent.
Conditions were near perfect. The water was clear with nearly 50 foot
horizontal visibility. We swam along the
edge of the rock reef, approaching our deepest point of about 75 feet just before
we reached our ascent point. We had seen
many lobsters hanging out under rock ledges.
Lobster season had a few more weeks to run. I figured we were looking at those that had
survived so far.
Contracting Salvage Fever
Then, on the ocean floor, I spied a Shakespeare fishing
rod and reel. The rig appeared to have
recently arrived. It was clean, with no
encrusting apparent. The reel mechanism
turned freely. I let Chad grab it. I do not fish, so I had little use for a rod
and reel. A bit further on, I spotted a
small boat anchor sitting out in the open.
I wondered if we went further if we would find a small boat sitting on
the bottom! No need to look, I
contracted a bad case of “salvage fever” upon circling the anchor. Symptoms of that affliction include clouded
judgement and tunnel vision to retrieve the object.
On closer examination, I recognized the Danforth style
anchor, similar to one that had graced the bow of a friend’s 22-foot Catalina
sail boat. It had about 20 feet of chain
attached to it. I speculated with the
proximity of the fishing rod to the anchor if these items had been accidently
dropped overboard. It did not matter,
Chad had the rod, I wanted the anchor.
The problem was how to get it to the surface. The anchor probably weighed about 10 to 15
pounds. I did not have a lift bag or
line to attach to the anchor. If I
surfaced, I feared that I would not be able to find my way back to this spot. So, in my own addlepated thinking brought on
by the salvage fever, I figured I could swim it to the surface by filling my
buoyancy compensator with air for extra lift.
Now these devices are called “anchor”—a device that
serves to hold an object firmly—for a reason.
I grasped the chain and started furiously kicking toward the surface but
made no progress. Chad hovered nearby holding
the fishing rod and probably trying to figure out what the hell his buddy was
attempting. I tried to raise it off the
bottom by pulling the chain hand over hand; that did not work. So in about 60 feet of water, I fully
inflated my bc like it was a lift bag. I
felt I would make some progress although I was breathing hard as I worked
against the weight. Then, I drew a
labored breath from my regulator. I was
running out of air!
I had the presence of mind to dump air from my fully
inflated bc before letting go of the anchor.
If I had not, I might have rapidly shot to the surface causing a fatal
arterial gas embolism. I executed an
emergency swimming ascent exhaling the air out of my lungs as I swam for the
surface. I got a couple of breaths of
air from the regulator just before I surfaced near the zodiac which had been
following our bubble trail.
Taking the Cure
As I bobbed on the surface waiting to heave myself on to
the boat, the fever instantly subsided. I realized what a very stupid mistake I
made. I cursed myself, wondering how I
could be so dumb. This 30 minute dive
may have been my last. In that instant,
I resolved to become more disciplined about my approach if I planned to
continue diving. I dismissed my
foolhardiness with a terse logbook entry, ALMOST GOT AN ANCHOR.
Within two months of the dive I completed dive rescue
certification course taught by Dennis Divins and Ed Stetson. By the end of the summer, I had completed a
Assistant Instructor course and Divemaster training and had completed more than
50 logged dives. I learned a lot and
became a much better diver.
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