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This incident happened last August in Sangalaki but I think I should share this experience hoping that it must just save your life too.
On my 3rd dive on the 1st diving day in Sangalaki, my wife and I were swept away from the reef due to strong current and we had to abandon the dive after 30mins. My dive computer went bizarre again and showed 5 mins deco time for a 30 mins dive with maximum depth of 15 metres, most of the time we were at 10 metres!!! I did the 5 mins deco stop to clear the computer (so that it would lock me out for 38 hours) and by the time we surfaced, we were about 300 metres away from the boat. We couldn’t fin back to the boat due to strong current and the boatmen were probably lying down resting as we couldn’t see them on the boat. I really do not expect them to be on the alert for the entire duration of our dive. Anyway, we ended our dive pre-maturely.
My wife and I were slowly but surely being swept away from the island while we waited for the other divers to finish the dive. The boat and the island were becoming smaller and smaller every minute we waited. After 20 minutes, the boat started to pick up the divers. After another 10 minutes, I can see that they were starting to look for us. (Actually, after we were rescued, we were told that they were playing and snorkeling with mantas on the surface thinking that we were still enjoying our dive).
Unfortunately, I left my surface marker in the room, but I don’t think they could see the surface marker even if I had brought it along. This is because by this time, the boat is really too far and the swell is huge. From where we were, the boat is less than 1 cm in size and it is still getting smaller, I could only see it when the swell brought us up. From time to time, we made desperate attempts of fining back to the island and waving frantically but to no avails. The current were really too strong. I realized that I was also fining the whole time to keep myself up because I was using a really crappy one that doesn’t have enough lift. My wife and I then decided to ditch all our weights.
The boat then went the opposite direction to look for us!!! At one time, the boat was only a dot in my vision! By this time the sun is already setting, it might be a good thing because they will be able to see my torch light! However, we might be swept too far away by night fall! Luckily, I always dive with at least one camera these days. I was diving with my Nikonos V and a Sea and Sea YS-120 strobe (Thank god, there is a test switch on the YS-120). I fired the strobe on test mode, after about 5 mins of firing the strobe, we saw the boat heading for our direction and we were finally picked up after over 100mins on the surface!!! What a relief but felt really bad to make all the divers on the boat really worried.
This is a really frightening experience because we were really being swept away from the island out to the open sea, I was really afraid for the first time in my life. I could also see it in my wife’s eye. Luckily, we were both calm during the ordeal.
I bought my wife a new jacket BCD before this trip and only realized that it comes with a whistle after we were picked up, we could have used that immediately after we surfaced. The good thing is I got a Halcyon Ecilpse BCD for my Birthday!
Lessons learned:
1) Always dive with a torch light, surface marker and whistle. A Underwater photography strobe can be helpful as well
2) Use a BCD that can help you float on the surface, not just for a short time while waiting for the boat to pick you up
3) Know your equipment well even if it is brand new.
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