Any deeper and you’d have to put your boots on.
[Standing in an alley, my buddy starts making a weird sound while smoking a cigarette]
Me: Dude, what is that? Did your cigarette go out?
Buddy: Uhh…it’s not a cigarette.
Me: Ohhh…is that why we’re standing in this back alley?
Buddy: Yeah…I, uh, thought you figured that out.
Me: I’m a little slow…
So, yes, I am a little slow. I also have a poor sense of smell…
I went crabbing today. My buddy (Adrian) and I both got our limit. This particular day started out fraught with errors:
So, we *finally* get out to the dive site after a long surface swim. Adrian and I just barely got our crab limit before having to head back to the surface. We ascended to 15 feet and waited there for 3 minutes for our safety stop (helps off-gas any nitrogen—probably not necessary for a short 40 foot dive, but can’t hurt). I thought I had about 400 psi left when we started going up (plenty for breathing 3 minutes at 15 feet). During our stop Adrian showed me his computer, which indicated his air time as “0″. I didn’t know this, but his computer apparently calculate a 750 psi reserve automatically. So I’m keeping an eye on Adrian since I think he’s pretty close to running out of air.
After we completed our safety stop I gave Adrian the signal to go up, and he signaled OK. I give a few kicks up and…”hmm, that breath felt kind of funny, in fact, I don’t think I got a full lungful out of that one…oh !@#$. I’m out of air.” So I start swimming for the surface (15 feet, no problem). My regulator managed to find another half breath for me or so, and I stopped for a second to look down at Adrian, wondering what he was doing down there, and if he was OK. I finally decided “screw him, I need to breathe” so I swam the rest of the way to the surface.
Since I was out of air, I needed to orally inflate my BCD (surface flotation). This normally wouldn’t be much of a chore but my legs were cramping from the long surface swim and chasing crabs down (they’re fast). So I was briefly kicking my head above the water, taking a breath, inflating my BCD as I sank back (resting my legs), and repeating this process until I had enough air in my BCD to float. Hurray! Disaster averted. But I was a little nervous there for a minute. The legs cramping up and having trouble staying afloat was alarming.
While this wasn’t an emergency along the lines of “I almost died”, it could very easily have gone the other way (sinking/drowning diver or lung expansion injury). This event would have been less of an emergency if my legs hadn’t been cramping up, but then that’s always what gets people killed–multiple things going wrong (the so-called “error chain”).
So, in the grand tradition of, “coulda, woulda, shoulda”, I’m outlining things I could have done different, should have done different, and will try to remember to do different in the future.
What I did wrong:
Other choices I could have made:
things to do next time:
All in all, I am thankful that, as I am so fond of saying, “God looks out for stupid people”.
Well now that it’s almost the weekend again, I have a report on my incredibly productive previous weekend.
Saturday:
I was supposed to go to a fish ID class at the Seattle Aquarium. I decided to take the bus—after standing at the bus stop for 20 minutes I realized that the bus wasn’t on the route that day thanks to the University District Street Fair. Every now and then I need to take the bus to remind myself why I never take the bus.
After missing the bus I decided I’d rather not drive downtown, fight parking, and still be late. So, I decided I would run. After getting back from a short run in Ravenna Park I decided that if I was going to have to take a shower anyway, I might as well get some more dirty work done. So I mowed the lawn, weeded the flowerbed, raked some leaves, and edged the lawn along the sidewalk.
After this I decided to go to Home Depot and pick up some stuff I needed—Saturday was scheduled to replace the neck seal on Adrian’s drysuit so I needed some router accessories.
Back from Home Depot and armed with a new router bit (router bits are expensive, I found out), I went to the Waterfront Activities Center and built a circle cutting jig for the router there, and used it to make two neck seal installation rings from a sheet of lexan (lexan is like plexiglas, but stronger).
My primary mission for the day accomplished, Adrian and I sailed the SX-18 in some pretty decent wind. It was a wild ride. No capsizes, but definitely some hull-flying moments to strike the fear of God into us.
Of course, after all this I was hungry, so I went home and made french dip sandwiches (I did not make the dip from a packet, either—onions, garlic, beef broth, oregano, and pepper make a better dip).
After I ate Matt called me and wanted some help working on his boat. I believe his exact words were “I need you to come bang on the starter with a hammer while I turn the key”. Well he didn’t have a hammer, he had a large crescent wrench, and banging on it didn’t really work (at first, anyway), but we did finally get the starter working, and the engine almost started.
After giving up on the boat Matt and I went to Adrian’s apartment and replaced the neck seal on his drysuit.
All in a days’ work…
Although I should note that this is by far the most productive day I have had in *years*.
Sunday:
I was supposed to meet Matt around 11:00, but he didn’t show so I sailed a Hobie Bravo around Union Bay for a little bit. Matt finally showed up and we spent some time screwing around the carburetor on his engine. We did some checks on the ignition system, too, since I thought the spark looked a little weak.
Around 1 or 2 in the afternoon we decided we were hungry so we ordered take-out pizza from Papa John’s. Papa John’s is by my house, and I needed to stop by there anyway to pick up a floor jack and other tools to install a trailer hitch on Adrian’s car. There’s a nice little tree covered area parallel to the north docks at the WAC, and we parked our three cars there (Mine, Matt’s, and Adrian’s) and stood around eating pizza and just generally enjoying the beautiful day.
It turns out that getting some of the bolts installed for a trailer hitch is a real pain. After half an hour of fighting with the bolts, we finally got them in. It turns out a piece of string can sometimes be more effective than telescoping magnetic retrieval tool. Who knew? 
However, Adrian’s car had recently been rear-ended, which pushed the bolts into positions they weren’t supposed to be in. After a little bit of fooling around we came to the conclusion that we weren’t going to get it on until the collision damage had been repaired.
So, failure on that project, but at least the most troublesome bolts are in position, and that’s the hardest part.
Around 4 the batteries for Matt’s boat were charged, so we went back to that project. After a fair amount of fooling around (turns out there was an ignition problem, and we’d mostly been going after fuel), we finally got it to run for about 15 minutes (this thing had been sitting for 6 months). Once the engine had warmed up we tried adjusting the idle speed and ended up stopping the engine. We couldn’t get it to start after that, and there was oil coming out of the ignition coil, so I’m guessing we cooked it.
That’s it for the weekend. If only all my days were that productive…