I was sure we’d used up all our bad luck yesterday. And at first, that seemed to be the case. We made it to our first choice of dive site, a sailboat wreck called the Naked Lady. Dave helped me shoot a bunch of topside segments I need for my video, and they all went well. Jeff and I had a perfectly nice, though not extraordinary, dive on the wreck.

We were the last ones in the water, so we were a bit surprised not to be the last ones back out. After a few minutes, it became apparent that one buddy pair in particular should have surfaced already. News slowly trickled to the surface with Dave and Tee, who’d been right behind us on the ascent line – one of the divers ran out of air on the wreck. In 100 feet of water.

Luckily for her, the divemaster Elaine was just a few feet away at the time, and apparently handled the situation perfectly (though I later discovered it’s the first time she’s had an out-of-air situation, even though she’s been a dive instructor and guide for years). It was a scary experience, though, and not just for the diver involved. I think we were all aware that it really could happen to anyone; it’s so easy to be distracted, especially when you’re taking pictures (and probably alitle narc’ed, down that deep). Apparently she was keeping an eye on her remaining bottom time (nitrogen absorption), which she assumed would run out before her air – usually that’s true. But not this time.

She’s fine, although she didn’t dive again that day.

Bow of the Naked Lady:

But our bad luck still hadn’t run out. The same guy who wound up taking a ride to the hospital yesterday surfaced from the Naked Lady with a flooded camera.

Doh.

I’m happy to report that the rest of the day went quite smoothly, at last. We even had a little dolphin encounter (minus the Man o’ Wars) on the way to the second dive site, a favorite of mine. My footage from today is less than spectacular, but I still enjoyed the diving. I got inked by an octopus for the first time, saw a purple frilly nudibranch, and had another turtle fly-by. Interesting story on that – Dave pointed the turtle out to us, and Jeff then inadvertently whacked Dave in the face with a fin while he got the shot. (He later apologized, and honestly, I think it looked worse from my angle than it actually was!)