David Strike wrote:

> Mate!  I've snipped the rest of your post 'cause I have no reason to gloat
> either!  After several years of saying - in my pre-dive briefing -
something
> like, "It's impossible to get lost at Shelly Beach providing you keep the
> rocks to the right on the way out , and to the left on the way back!",  I
> once got lost!!!!  Now I just tell people that it's difficult - but not
> impossible - to get lost diving there!  :-)

There have been times I didn't know where I was, but I've never been lost.
8^)  Viv will probably tell me this is a guy thing, and is probably right.

It kind of reminds me of a night in the Everglades.  I'm not sure you can
picture this well until you've actually been there, but in the sea of grass,
pretty much everything looks like everything else, particularly at night.  I
suppose a desert is much the same, but there aren't any deserts near here.
After you've been in an area long enough, you begin to notice small
differences, clues to your location that people who have not been exposed to
such an environment see, but don't mentally record.  It's a bit like the
instructions I often share with boaters to look behind them on the way out
because that's what they'll see on the way back in.

At any rate, the camp we used to have was about 15 miles into the swamp and
I was several miles further in that night.  I was frogging, something that
requires one's full attention, sometimes at the expense of noticing other
things.  I'd been out a couple hours when somebody from the camp called me
on the radio.  They asked where I was.  My response was "I don't know."
They asked if I was lost, to which I responded "No."  They didn't understand
until I explained that I didn't really know where I was, but that I knew, in
general, which way was back to camp and was comfortable that I'd find my way
back without problem . . . which I did.  None of the landmarks I needed for
navigation was in sight, but I was sure I'd find some as I headed in the
general direction of camp.  I did not know where I was, but I was not lost.
8^)

I've had the same thing happen when diving.  Most of my diving has been from
an anchored boat.  I had no choice but to figure out how to return to it.
Since most of my diving was also no deco and at moderate depths, this really
wasn't a problem.  I always knew the general direction of the boat and, if
nothing else, could always surface, take a bearing and make my way back.
That makes it very easy to forget to "look behind you" on the way out.

> If you're in midwater with no visual references at all - which, I guess,
is
> what you're actually asking, (and that I was trying to avoid 'cause I
didn't
> have an answer!) - then you do have to ask yourself the question:  What am
I
> doing here? :-)))

I just thought it interesting that the discussion addressed the ability to
travel a compass course without visual references to tell you if you were
going straight and one of the conditions mentioned was "no current."  If I
can't see enough to know I'm swimming straight, I suspect I'd have a problem
telling if there was a current or not as well.  If he hadn't said that right
handed people wound up in one place and left handed ones wound up in
another, I probably would have attributed Christian's navigation problems to
current that he had not known about and, therefore, had not taken into
account.

At any rate, I have an answer to the "What am I doing here" question.  Deco,
deep stops and/or a safety stop without visual reference.  I've got an
illustrative story.  Somewhere that Jayna and I were diving with a good
friend, probably one of the Cayman Islands, three of us ascended from a
relatively deep dive, close to or at the watersports association limit of
110 feet.  Visibility was down, for the Caymans, so that we could not see
the bottom from our 15 foot safety stop.  We noticed no current during the
ascent and, as a group, decided to spend a bit of extra time at our safety
stop.  We sort of hung there for a few minutes, practicing buoyancy control,
contemplating the meaning of life, sleeping, and the like.  The important
thing is that none of us was looking up, where the boat, our only visual
reference, was.  When we did look, the boat was not there.  Upon surfacing,
we were surprised to find that it was a good 100 meters away, perhaps more.
We had encountered a surface current and, because we were not looking up,
had been carried quite a ways without being aware of it.  I figured that the
swim back was not going to be fun.  Sure enough, it wasn't.

More recently, over the last 10 years or so, there have been an increasing
number of dives where the boat was not anchored or moored.  Most of the
diving a short distance north of home is normally subject to moderately
strong current.  Even on wreck dives, some of the area operators prefer to
move to a drifting buddy team rather than force each ascending team to fight
the current while boarding.  The visibility locally is not bad, but it's not
always great either.  It's pretty common to do deep stops in midwater, with
no visual references.  This is not normally a problem.  The diver and the
operator both know there is a current.  Occasionally, however, midwater and
surface currents are not in the same direction.  When that happens, divers
get a good lesson on why we carry safety sausages.

Lee