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near drowning experience

The boat moored for my second dive that day at a site called Midway Reef, a submerged reef known for its continuous currents and lots of pelagics to be seen as one drifts along the endless coral patches. According to the tide table, there weren’t supposed to be any currents or even if there is, it’s supposed to be very mild current but the surface currents seemed to be very strong that afternoon. I guess there’s a reason why it’s called a prediction table, isn’t it? I made one of those mistakes by trusting the tide table without second guessing it.

Before the dive started, Mamat went to the back of the boat and jumped in to check the current but he forgot his fins so he drifted to the side of the boat and climbed back up, with assistance by the boat crew of course. It was quite a big wooden boat which Xavier renovated it from the ordinary fishing boat. Although it’s adjusted quite well to be a dive boat, the sides are still a bit high to climb up unassisted.

So I joked to Mamat asking if he jumped into the water to pee and we laughed it off, then picked up my fins and mask to check the underwater currents myself before the rest starts to gear up. Kaz was sitting on the other side of the boat chatting with his students and I asked if he saw any fusiliers so I probably could just assess the situation from the surface. He shook his head and so I went to the platform, put on my fins and jumped in right away.

As soon as I got into the water, the mask slipped out of my head but I was already underwater. I had my hand holding the mask but then my right fin slipped out of my foot and I could still see it drifting away under the boat towards the propeller area. In a split second I had to decide whether I’m going to waste time fixing my mask or just dash to grab my fin before it got drifted too far out and lose it. It’s my new Cressi Reactor Pro fin and I like it so much. I wasn’t wearing a wetsuit, just my Ripcurl boxer shorts and Netherlands jersey which has become my new underwater uniform and I knew immediately that that won’t help me to float in such surface current.

So I said to myself, “screw with the mask, I can still see it and before I ran out of breath I might as well grab the fin”. By the time I was halfway under the boat with my left leg finning helplessly and left hand grabbing the fin, I started to choke out of air and I think I was already about 5m away from the platform underneath the boat. I had no other choice but to hold on to the boat’s hull and finning with one leg. Somehow I managed to drag myself out of the situation against the strong current and surfaced at the platform where I first jumped. Kaz just looked and smiled at me as I was holding on to the platform gasping for air, cursing on how strong the current was and told him that I almost lost my fins. At the time, it didn’t occur to me that nobody realized I was facing difficulties, they thought I was just making fun of the situation. We were all joking to each other and seeing on how Mamat and I joked to each other about the Midway Reef’s currents, they were really sure that I know the site very well. I only dived the place once and that was supposed to be my second attempt! Perhaps they think I have gills behind my ears :-)

I lost the mask, but saved the fins. The fins are mine but the mask belongs to Macha’s dive center. Looks like I’ve got to pay him for that later. I asked Mamat for another mask and then grabbed the buoy line, finned as hard as I could until about 3m deep and saw the fusiliers were all in frenzy fighting the current. I knew at that time that the current was too strong for a comfortable dive. I surfaced and reported it, asked if everyone still wants to dive the place and I got the nods from them.

That was my last dive, it was good for me because I have this principle that every dive is a good dive – there’s no such thing as bad dive :-) but it’s not really something that I wanted to remember much about. The pre-dive incident however, I’ll keep that in mind always as reminder so it won’t happen again in the future. The current was too strong at buoy line due to the breakup currents and many aborted their dive after that. Halfway through the dive, I was asked to abort and I didn’t have the SMB – all of my gears were still at Riduan’s place in Tioman and I’ve been diving with rented gears lately, well except for my fins. I searched for Nazri and asked if I could borrow his SMB but on that particular dive he didn’t have one. So I had to turn back to the buoy line, become the “underwater tow truck” pulling all three of them dive buddies and again, I was gasping for air and very tired by the time everyone was holding the buoy line doing their safety stop.

While doing safety stop I heard the stress call, the incessant banging of the boat ladder, which could mean only one thing – storm is coming. True enough, after surfacing I saw a thick black cloud on the horizon and the surface was starting to get choppy. The rest of dive group surfaced not long after I did and we quickly moved out of the area. So I guess the tide table weren’t far off from being accurate afterall, it’s the storm in the distance that’s affecting the currents. What I should’ve done was to also check the weather on the horizon and not rely just on the tide table’s prediction.

Lesson learned, good experience and something to be talked about the next time I hang out with my diving buddies again.

Good thing is… I’m still alive :-)