The sea completely kicks my ass

I have never, ever been this tired in my life. Today goes into the record books as "Yes, it can be worse than the time we tried a shore dive in Myrtle."

First off work called me at 4:00 AM because the idiots in Atlanta forgot to forward the on-call phone to the guy that was really on-call. Naturally I couldn't get back to sleep.

I get up at 5, have some waffles and juice for breakfast, wake Julie up, and we head out. So we get to the place by 6:30 blissfully unaware of just how bad the seas are.

By 7:00 - 7:15 we've cleared the channel and are in the worst seas I've ever experienced. Experienced sea faring folks may scoff at today, but all I could do was hang on for dear life and try not to puke. Others were not so lucky. There were 11 men and 2 women divers not including the staff, and roughly half puked over the side before the day was over. Some repeatedly. I wasn't one of them, but I certainly wasn't feeling well.

The dive site is naturally 22 miles out in these heavy seas so going through these seas to get there is going to take a while. It felt like the longest two hours of my life. When we finally got there I felt like shit. Honestly I was just exhausted from trying to just hold on and maintain.

Dumb, but determined, I donned my equipment and did a giant stride. I had some trouble getting down, and I'm shocked to tell you that 21 pounds wasn't enough to get me down. The dive master did say it was (I think) much, much saltier than other dive sites and would take more weight than normal. He was right. I planned on going with 18 pounds, which is the most I've ever needed before. When he told me 24 I thought he was nuts, and just added a 3 pound weight. Note to self: Trust your dive master, that's what he's paid for.

The wreck itself was nothing spectacular. Saw your typical sea life for this area around it, but certainly nothing worth enduring that trip out for. Had a good time while I was there, but when it was time to come up there was a momentary brain fade of "Empty your BC a bit as you go up because you were almost 80 feet down" and that did not help my assent. Add to that the aluminum cylinder now being positively buoyant, and my planned safety stop at 15 feet saw me bobbing on the surface for a moment. I fought to get back down to 15 feet, and I was head down kicking to try to maintain even after emptying every last bubble out of my BC. (Again, Dave, listen to your dive master about proper weighting!)

When it was time to surface I was lucky in that getting back onto the boat in those seas actually wasn't as bad as I was expecting. Once I got back onto the boat though, I just collapsed after taking off my stuff. I was completely exhausted. I sat there for who knows how long - an hour? More? - just blocking the sun with my arm trying to rest my head, and again trying not to yak.

When most others were gearing up to go back for their second dive, I did the wave off. Even though I felt better in the water than I did on the boat, I knew that in my condition that going back in was a very, very bad idea. I wasn't alone either. There was one casualty on the deck before I even surfaced. He was just hanging over the side almost lifeless. He gets idiot of the day because while I and one other guy didn't go in, were at least smart enough to stay out once we made that call. Moron # 1 after everyone else is down and has been down says "I'm going in." The dive master on the boat told him that they don't allow solo divers, but if he was determined he had to go down the rope, stick to the group, and surface when they did.

Sure enough when everyone else surfaces, no one says they've seen him and now everyone starts looking for him. I'm a poor judge of distance but probably 200 yards away we see his head bobbing in the surf, no where near the boat or line that they've said repeatedly to stick near because the current was strong today. (Another factor in my fatigue.) Out goes the life ring, and a whole bunch of rope. The poor dive master that thought he was done for the day gets to go fish out this moron.

Finally he's back on the boat, the dive masters grab the lines back in, and we're on our way. Did I mention that by now the seas have calmed to what they were the day we dove Barracuda Alley? Yeah I was so thrilled because if they'd been this way all day I probably wouldn't feel this way. I take a seat on a bench by a wall behind the cabin and proceed to pass out. I drift in and out of sleep for the next hour and a half.

Not long after I wake up we find ourselves back in port, and it's time to go. Julie got delayed in traffic, but no big deal. After she picked me up we went home, and I proceeded to sleep for three more hours. At this point I know I'm going to sleep well tonight.

Man what an adventure this turned out to be. Definitely not the way you want your first dive of the year to go.