Diving during the night is fun. Diving is fun anyway and doing it during the night adds some extra. This is adventurous, challenging and you may expect to see different creatures than during the day. That was something that I expected when preparing for this dive but it turned out to be frustrating. So do not expect a description of a great fun dive, but rather a dive story that ended-up fine without accident, and which had even no situation close to accident, but there were many issues to learn from. But let’s go by the time line linear.
The summer is over. The MBA studies start next Saturday and it is going to occupy each Saturday now on. My wife told me that my diving was enough for her for the year and I have to spend my free time with family. I quickly realized that there is no other possibility to dive but during night. Night dives should be performed at location that you know well and dove already day-time. The choice for me is obviously Dorog. (If you may not happen to know why it was obvious read my previous reports. I dove this dirty lake quite a few times this summer.)
Making a few phone calls I could arrange the dive center to be open, dive buddy and I could also convince Berta Klári to come with us, though this last one was not an easy task. I had to call her and say: “Hello Klári! We make a night dive this and that time. Do you come with us?” “Yes!” – she said immediately.
We started from Budapest to Dorog at 6am. This is a thirty-some kilometer drive (not dive!) but it took almost two hours to get there. The road was full of commuters cars. We arrived at the dive center at 8:40pm.
We got dressed and assembled the diving equipment. Tamás has lost his lamp in the lake last time, and he has purchased a new one since then. This one was an expensive, high power led lamp which was worth to care for. He announced kidding that he hangs himself if he looses his lamp.
I used a BCD rented, which I wore when I dove Hegyeshalom. It had no octopus fixing. Instead I was told in Hegyeshalom to stuff the octopus pipe folded into the jacket’s shoulder strap hole. This worked fine in the Hegyeshalom lake and in Dorog last time day-time. The spare lamp went into the BCD pocket. The first lamp was attached to the jacket with a half meter rubber band. This was normal and generally safe, but I started to feel myself like a Christmas tree having all jewels hanging from me.
When I reached for the second stage I realized that octopus pipe was above my shoulder. I had to remove that, and put it under my arm. I did folding it again and stuffing it back to the shoulder strap hole, but then the second stage got stuck under the octopus pipe. I had to fix that.
When checking the second stage to be in place in front of me I could grab it only the second try I had a feeling running through my brain for a very short while that it may had been insecure if I need to seek it underwater.
The manometer was hanging behind me and I forgot to lead it through the strap to be along with the inflator tube. I fixed that when I was already in the water.
We walked into the water (18oC), put on the fins and headed to the buoy where we planned to sink. That time I realized that my computer was loose so I went back a few meter and made the strap shorten. In the meantime Klári and Tamás swam five meter from me. I laid on the water with my jacket inflated and started to follow them.
The first sip of air through the snorkel drove water into my mouth. No problem, I was prepared for anything like that. I blew some air into it harshly to spit out the water from the tube. The next sip was again full of water. I did blow some air into it again and I started to believe that my snorkel got loose and the end of it went dangling under water. But it was still no time for me to realize what it really was. I tried to breathe third time with no success, when the lake floor became lit by my lamp being a few inches from my face. I did not inflate my BCD full and I was already 2 meters below the water surface already. Luckily I did this amateurish maneuver in a shallow part of the lake. The good side of the situation was however that I was not even close to panic even when I started to need that sip of air badly. I stopped for a short while, realized what the situation was and decided to swim up (just a great push from the ground) and not seek the second stage. At the surface I inflated my jacket full.
At the diving buoy we started to descent along the rope of the buoy. We were lucky to see a perch (grouper type of lake fish) under the diving platform. But that was all the luck we had. We visited first the sunk platform, 60 meter from there following a rope where we expected a pike or cat fish. There was none. I followed the rope, Tamás was on my right side a bit behind me and Klári was watching both of us from behind us. I could see their light cone all the time, but Tamás was following me slowly and I had to slow down and stop many times.
Klári once started tugging my fins and showed me the sign to keep together with Tamás.
The sunk fishing platform was deserted. A very small something that looked like a fish was twinkling in the light of the lamps. It was short time after I directed towards to the rope back to swim to the platform and then to the fish farm where we originally wanted to go.
Tamás followed me, but I felt again that he was slow. I had to stop many times and I started to be impatient. I flipped on my back some times to see Tamás and also Klári. I signaled OK lightening my hand and also circling with the pamp a few times, but lost Tamás a few times. He was behind me and I could see his lamp, but he was definitely out of reach, which distance is required by diving safety rules. The next time Klári’s warning was more serious. After leaving the second anchor fixing the rope leading to the fish farm being two-hundred some meter I realized that Tamás was more than 2 meter behind me. I left the rope and started to swim back towards him and Klári. I have lost the rope and when I could see it again with aid of Klári, she was pointing to a direction that I suspected was the way back. I actually was not sure of the directions but I felt that the direction was the way back. I was not sure why she decided to direct us back, but I suspected that she became fed up with our not swimming close.
We slowly swam back and went up to the surface from the dive training platform. The depth of the platform is 6 meters and we went up in three minutes, very very slowly.
At the surface we discussed briefly what has happened. Tamás explained that from his point of view I was swimming very fast, which he could keep pace with, but did not want. Klári told us that Tamás was swimming calm and good and I was the one, who was rushing, and stopping, helter-skeltering in the water. She also said that she felt the cold in her joints, but if we wanted we had the opportunity to visit the reed where we could have some luck seeing some fish in the shallow. Tamás did not want and I did not try to convince him.
We dressed up, administered the dive, paid the fees and went home sleeping. I got to bed around midnight and woke up 6am next morning to work.
After sleeping a few hours and having some distance in time from the first impressions I gathered my thoughts.