Day 4 - Orkney SCUBA Day 3
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Hobbit Summarizes Our Day ...
I got my first picture of an interesting toilet at the ferry dock on Hoy. In Heathrow I observed that Adidas are in style, bell bottoms are out and punk boots are very in. I can now officially start wearing my punk boots I still have from high school.
On our first dive, third day, the wind was blowing 30 knots per hour and there was a lot of surface chop. This doesn’t really affect diving because once you get under the water it’s calm. But it does make it tough for the boat to drop you off and pick you up. We had to get kitted up and stand by at the ready, and do this on a very pitchy boat. After standing in really heavy gear for a loooong time, Hazel yelled, “Jump!”
I jumped in, grabbed the shot line and all was well until I heard Wendell yell, “HOBBIT, I”M OUT OF AIR!!!”
I swam over to him, stuck my regulator in his mouth (too choppy to use a snorkel on the surface), put in my secondary and turned on his air. By then we had drifted too far off the shot line and were going to have to be picked up and re-dropped anyhow, but had huffed away a bunch of our air. So, we stuck our hands up indicating that we needed to be picked up.
Let’s just talk for a little bit about how close we came to losing Wendell today. In all the confusion, Wendell jumped in without his air being turned on. Luckily he had inflated his BS and dry suit “before” he jumped in the water, so he was at least floaty. We don’t know why his air got turned off except maybe he got interrupted in the middle of things and then turned it back the wrong way.
Had Wendell not had his air on and not inflated his bc and dry suit, he would’ve gone rocketing to the bottom, which is 130 feet, not been able to breathe and likely drowned. There was no way I could’ve seen in the low visibility to find him in time to prevent him from drowning. Needless to say, it freaked me out and many hours of discussion have taken place since. We missed that dive, but went and did another in shallower water and in a calm sheltered part of the flow that afternoon.
The Transderm is a wonderful thing, but we wondered if going diving with it on squeezed out more drug, because it’s starting to wear off. It would be easier to walk if the ground would stop moving.
The flush button is on the top
The round button is for liquids, the crescent button is for solids ...
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