Diving at Dorog again, Hungary August 27, 2005

This was not planned. I don’t mean that I fell accidentally into the water. It simply means that after three consecutive weekends of diving and before a planned three day Adria tour I wanted to stay a full weekend with my family. Man proposes God disposes the saying says. God (or rather Godess), in this case, was Klári Berta the instructor who taught me UEF OWD level.

On Tuesday afternoon my phone rang. It was her, and she asked what I was planning for the weekend. I told her my plans making the "mistake" saying that I had nothing special planned for Saturday morning. "OK. Then you come with me diving to Dorog!" – she commanded.

Well, err ... gulp ... "Why?"

"I will teach you a few things before you drown yourself." she said in a voice that also meant for me that I will not only learn techniques, but also correct my attitude respecting depth, diving and rules of safe diving.

"OK I trust you, but promise I will survive."

This was not a serious question though. She also wrote me a mail before we talked over the phone, and showing that to my wife I also got her permission. She wanted me to be with her for the weekend, but also wanted me to stay alive at least as long as she does. Klári and I arranged the technical details regarding stuff I needed to lend, meeting location and I waited for this special dive for the rest of the week. Days at work passed slowly for the rest of the week.

On Saturday morning I got up early to pick up Miklós Horváth, who was coming along with us to perform his final exam dive for the UEF AOWD level and Klári with the tanks, and the stuff we needed. We got into the car and headed towards Dorog.

This day the lake was deserted. There was no one in the lake except us and a few anglers at the shore. We prepared and went for the first dive. Klári told us the menu, what we were preparing for. During the morning dive we sunk to 5m to a wooden plate. There I had to practice BCD take off and put on under water. She was lenient not requesting the same while floating. Miklós was supposed to navigate us to another buoy using his compass afterwards. This was twenty meters away from us, but the visibility was only 40cm. We did it right. I mean Miklós did it OK finding the buoy underwater.

After this a longer navigation started for a distance about 100m. It was Miklós’ turn again and we finally rose to the surface 20m from the target. That was quite OK again. We have seen some fishes, a plastic chair wreck and a car tire on the bottom. This time we did not collect the garbage.

Finally Miklós got his last navigation task to direct us to the shore, where our stuff was. When we were at 3m Klári directed me to float over her and started to push a great amount of bubbles to my face from her second stage for 20secs or so. It was supposed to cause light nitrogen narcosis. I did not feel anything special except that the bubbles were annoying and disturbing my view. Klári stopped and started the same maneuver with Miklós. At this point the lake started to rotate. For a very few seconds I felt if I have drunken some good Transylvanian plum spirit. I had to concentrate not to roll to my side. This lasted however not more than two seconds.

Miklós told us later that he started to feel sleepy while the bubbles were invading her face. Both my experience and his resemble nitrogen narcosis, thus it was a good lesson the experience a bit what it is like while still being in a controlled and safe depth. This also taught us to avoid the bubbles of other diver floating beneath us.

We climbed out, the sun started to peek out from above the clouds. We drunk water and spent the SIT.

For the afternoon dive we were accompanied by a fourth person, who I new by face from two weeks before, a NAUI AOWD. He just came to the lake alone hoping to find someone he could join some one for some dive. He could.

We headed towards the reed swimming along it hoping to see some creatures. We were lucky meeting a crab which started to be rare this year in the lake. The visibility was still 40cm or less and I my nose was hit a few times by the fins of the NAUI guy in front.

On the way back the lake bottom was rising slowly and I did not realize that we were already in the shallow (about 2.5m) and my jacket started to rocket me up to the surface. I immediately started to let the air out but it was not enough. Miklós had to catch me and pull me back. He did it right the way he was supposed to.

When we had fun dived enough and we were our way back to the shore Klári removed my mask, and my second stage from my mouth. I had to practice not to panic, but seek the air and fix the mask afterwards. It was not problem rather fun. After we exchanged OK we swam on and Klári cut off my first stage. I realized what she did and after a few sips when I had no more air I signaled and asked for some from her octopus. She was kind providing me some. She asked me if I was OK but I signaled I was not. My right leg was cramped. This is, however, not trivial to explain in the water so she was pushing some more air into my mouth first. I signaled to rise and we slowly did. I managed the spasm in my calf and we reached shore.

The NAUI guy was shocked by the treatment more than I was. He was not informed that this was a practice and all he realized that I went out of air and in trouble. We told him what it was.

Finally we packed the stuff, administered the log book and traveled back to Budapest.

Oh, well. I almost forgot a final important moment. At the beach we inaugurated Miklós as Advanced Open Water Diver. He had to drink water from a mask, and he had to bend over while we spanked him with two fins. Two hard, technical fins. Congratulations!