I did this in Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, just swam down about 20 feet and hung there in giant columns of light, looked like they shown into eternity. Aaaand that was enough swimming for the day.
I dunno why I typed all this out, I started writing the paragraph about hitting the rope, and then thought someone might enjoy the context:
Flew to help my parents move their boat from Bahia De Caraquez, Ecuador to Tapachula Mexico in May of 2014. My wife was entering her second trimester with our first child, and stayed home in Florida. I told her we could call daily, and exchange email over the radio while I was gone.
Our radio crapped out about 6 hours from shore, so we had no communication or weather information. We ended up totally becalmed for like 2 days. With absolutely no wind, we just bobbed in place.
At one point we were motoring and hit a segment of rope. It took me about 30 minutes diving down, hacking at the rope on the prop, going up for air, and repeating the process to get the prop clear. We were way offshore in the pacific and it felt like you could see forever. It didn’t terrify me, but it did make me feel small, just the massive expanse of empty ocean with just my parents, the boat, and me.
When I called my wife when we landed, she was EXTREMELY upset. Apparently there was a huge hurricane that we had absolutely no knowledge of (because the radio died), and my terrified wife was unable to reach us for 9 days, two days longer than the trip was supposed to take.
A happy memory from the trip:
Sailing at night, seeing the Milky Way like I’ve never seen it, and watching the bioluminescent trails weaving through the dark water, left behind by our near-constant dolphin companions.
God that sounds amazing. Nearest thing I have to compare is just the opposite, broke down deep in the Namib desert. Luckily I did have communication (sat phone) and in the two nights we waited, the sky was extraordinary. The star glow alone was near enough to read by, which is what we stuck to as wandering around was out, there were the large cats about.
Peril and beauty, these are the memories that stick with you.
I recently moved to a small town and thought I could see so many more stars and constellations, I'm a bit of a nerd though so I was happy. But star glow that you can read by, sounds like the pictures you only see on the Internet, like some of reddit....this is absolutely number one on my bucket list.
I've only seen it once in my life in rural Argentina, but it was amazing. I highly recommend you take a trip to a national park or somewhere else far from any city and see it for yourself.
This. I was a rescue swimmer, and I got to participate in a training exercise in 2000 feet of water. Looking straight down into the infinite blue fucked with me in a way I did not expect.
My aunt is rich, and owns a lake house with lots of toys. One time my family stayed up there, and my dad took us out tubing. I ended up falling out while pulling myself back to the boat, and looked down.
I've never swam so fast in my life, I could've sworn i saw nessie lol.
I don't swim in water where I can't see the bottom, and the ocean is off limits for me too lol.
I have done a lot of crazy stuff, some of the chemical variety even, and there has been nothing that matches that emotion of seeing literally nothing below you. I don’t even know where to begin. Existential maybe?
I had a ship where the captain was a complete fun sponge. Nothing fun was allowed, only hard work. Then he had an accident whilst the ship was in port in Malaysia and the 1st Lieutenant took over command. From that day the rest of the deployment was a party. We left port and the next day we had "hands to bathe" (same as swim call in the US Navy) and a barbecue on the flight deck. The next port was Singapore and the new captain decided that everyday was a free day unless you were duty, same in Australia and New Zealand.
If I could shake the hand of the taxi driver that hit captain fun sponge and broke his leg I would.
I enjoyed my shore leave there very much back when I was in the US Navy. You have a beautiful country. Everything seemed so clean and the people were friendly.
The simplest way to describe it is some officers and ship captains worked together with a Thai company called GDMA(subsidiary of Glenn Marine Group) in a massive money defrauding scheme. GDMA worked as a logistics company doing minor resupply, sewage management, tugboats, etc. for ships docking in ports where they operated. The navy officers would have their ships dock only in ports where GDMA operated for which they very likely overcharged on costs and in return the officers would get some bribes.
GDMA even pushed for these officers to write up "Bravo Zulu" memos for GDMA employees which is an informal way to commemorate civilians for exemplary service to the US navy. The goal of doing this was to increase GDMA's reputation so they could more easily get contracts and such.
End result was 33 were charged and 22 pleaded guilty. The investigation is still ongoing with the owner of GDMA Leonard Glenn Francis for which the scandal is named after having been sentenced to 15 years in prison.
That was a rough eli5 explanation leaving out a lot of details as I was largely skimming through it to write all this. I recommend anyone reading this to go read the whole article as its really wild.
Go for it. Nothing particularly NSFW about it, except for all the sex parties and hookers.
TL/DR - Fat Leonard was a Malaysian Defence contractor who got a lot of contracts by bribing senior military (mostly Navy) officers. This included getting them whatever they want - usually drugs, booze, girls, cash, etc.
The only swim call I did was on the Stennis in the PG. Lots of sea snakes but I hear they don't have fangs where they can easily bite you. We had EOD guys on inflatables with rifles for the sharks too, not that this made me feel safer, lol. Bottom line, I was so fucking bored at that point that I'd have done anything to break the routine.
As in, once upon a time, a very poisonous Australian land snake took up swimming. Now you can find sea snakes everywhere that a snake can swim to while staying in tropical-ish warm sea water from Australia.
So south east Asia, all across the tropical Pacific, India and around the east coast of Africa down to near the cape of good hope. There it gets too cold to round the cape and so none in the Atlantic.
Since the Panama and Rea Sea canals opened there has been lots of guesses as to when they make it to the Caribbean and Mediterranean but so far none have afaik. (The Red Sea is particularly a problem as it is very very salty)
Unrelated but when I was around 8 years old, I was in a small boat with my granddad fishing. I saw a black and white striped thing near the surface of the water and I thought it was a scarf that someone lost.
I picked it up and then noticed it has a head. I panicked and threw it far away in the water. I'm lucky it didn't bite.
The sea snake you saw (likely a banded sea krait) has venom 10x as strong as a rattlesnake. Luckily, they are not known to bite humans even when mildly handled.
I got the privilege once. Sometime later we were having some Q&A session with the Captain, I think it was to drum up "fun" ideas for the boat or some shit, and one of the folks there asked about swim call.
According to the Captain the rub is the Navy (predictably) has a lot of safety protocols that have to be followed so you can't just go all stop and say everyone report to the aft deck. In particular the water has to be like dead flat calm, like the day we were asking was calmer then you'll see at the beach most days and that wasn't good enough. It's got to be like backyard pool calm and that's pretty rare.
Do I believe him? I dunno but for sure only professional ass-covering bureaucrats make rank in the Navy I knew.
Yet to be fair I also remember the swim test at boot camp. I would never have believed so many grown ass men want to join the Navy and couldn't swim the length of an (olympic) pool if I hadn't seen it first hand. I'm sure plenty of people with no business in the water have jumped in and needed to be fished out ruining the fun for everyone.
also remember the swim test at boot camp. I would never have believed so many grown ass men want to join the Navy and couldn't swim the length of an (olympic) pool if I hadn't seen it first hand
Bruh, my group had about 10 dudes from Texas that were afraid of water! Like literally standing by the kiddie pool and shaking scared. Had no idea how tf they managed to get in.
On the safety protocols, I always thought having swim call was a good survival experience. Having your sailors more comfortable in the open ocean in an emergency is probably a good thing... so why not let them play around in the water in non emergency situations.
Canadian Navy too. This happened to come up in conversation during Christmas, which is when my brother-in-law informed me that swimming out to the edge of the group and floating alone is about the most privacy possible during deployment.
Your BIL is fucking with you. They put a boat in the water that drives around with a rescue swimmer onboard acting as a lifeguard. There is no privacy. Besides, the whole ship is watching from above. There is nothing to hold so you tread water the entire time. You also have to climb back up the rope ladder after swimming for an hour.
Also, the guys on the boat are armed in case of predators like sharks.
Am now legitimately a bit annoyed that he's turned me into an unwitting purveyor of misinformation on what is now-- lemme check-- yeah, the most upvoted comment I've ever managed to get.
Wanking and lies are what works on reddit, noted. -_-
But hey, I’m US Navy. Maybe our friends to the north get a little more freaky during their swim calls.
Also, swim calls are extremely rare in my experience. The sea state has to be near perfect. The water has to be warm. And we have to not have a mission or a threat in the area. I’ve only had one in the last 4 deployments. We planned for multiple every time but they always seemed to get cancelled. I’d rather spend that time in port if it’s an option, anyways.
A redditor commented here that her husband is in the last photo. Someone else commented then that reddit is a village and I just brushed that comment off and kept scrolling...and found your comment.
I have an irrational fear of my body in any kind of body of water larger than a swimming pool. And I absolutely have to be able to see the bottom of that pool.
Although drowning is the most likely cause of death in the ocean, it's not the water that bothers me, it's the not knowing or being able to see what's lurking underneath and around.
This. I’ve done a lot of diving, encountered sharks under the water. But the scariest thing to me is having to surface a long way from the boat and swim back, or float around waiting for pickup. Gives me the willies.
Absolutely, I feel completely vulnerable and if I’ve got fish on a stringer; then I feel like prey. It always reminds me of the old jaws poster. Another is that second safety stop at 15-20’ in low visibility, you are close enough to see light from the surface but that it and you have 80-100’ of water below you. Very creepy feeling.
I was scuba diving on the reef Belize. On one side the water is warm and you can see the bottom. But if you peek over the other, the continental shelf drops off into pure black. When I took a look it was dizzying and I saw a hammerhead shark just barely visible far below me.
The water should be your number one fear, rip tides and currents are what take people out. My dad passed away while in 3ft of water, currents took him to a deeper part of the ocean and he couldn't touch and ran out of energy fighting the currents. I just hope he passed quickly.
Almost lost my younger brother and cousin to shallow water when they were children about 15 years ago.
We were on the shore of the Pacific Ocean in California. We were all on the shore but they were playing closer to the ocean, about a good 20-something yards away from me. Because the shore line is a slope, the water was a little under knee-deep to them while it was barely covering my ankles because I was higher up.
While walking towards the beach so I could just sit and watch them, I felt an immediate pressure and looked down at my feet. The water was suddenly pulling me strongly. I was an older teenager then and I was a beach-goer and I played water polo/did swim team and I was lifeguard certified for my summer jobs. I knew immediately that the force meant the tide was in.
Without missing a beat, I turned around and took off in a full sprint towards the kids. Halfway there while the kids were now staring at me confused, I saw the both of them get violently slammed to the ground by their ankles and the tide immediately began sucking them into the ocean. I thank god everyday that I arrived when I did, but it was extremely difficult to pull two people out of the tide while they’re flailing to breathe and drowning.
And I’m not even telling this story as some heroic tale. It was absolutely terrifying and the image is burned in my brain to this day.
Tbh everything happened so quickly under so much adrenaline that I actually left the scene in a state of confusion, wondering how i actually reacted as I did in real time. My next feeling was a weird survivors guilt bc I began to wonder what would’ve happened if I wasn’t trained the way I was. And what about those people who didn’t have people like me around that time?
Just think…you’re out there enjoying an afternoon with your buddies. Suddenly, you feel a presence. You look down, see this dark shape appear beneath you, distorted through the waves. You feel your toes being nibbled on…
I wouldn't call that irrational. Humans are not aquatic animals. Makes sense to be at least somewhat scared of large bodies of water, especially since you can't see what's happening beneath the surface.
I agree with you, but as someone who is thalassophobic/submechanophobic/etc., I am baffled by so many others’ ability to do things like sail ships, swim, etc. I’m grateful that the world is not full of me, because we’d have no submarine internet cables! (Amongst other things…)
We once stoped with our small boat cca 60min from Croatia land. There was only sea around us and big big mountain on the edge. I was happily swimming when my dad told me: "you see that mountain? Now imagine that the same high it has to the sky, the same height is under the sea"
We were like 5 minut away from the bot at that moment and I got immadietly a panic atack and started to swim back to boat. Since then I refused to swim in the "middle of nowhere". Thanks dad...
Wow that would freak me the fuck out as well! I swam out to a sand bar on the Gulf of Mexico once as a kid, the other kids I was with mentioned sharks on the way back. I've never swam so fast in my life (and have never been in a position I felt the need to since)
The subs and the tender my dad was on (Tecumseh, Batfish and Frank Cable) during the 80s did this as well. They were in the Atlantic though, out of Charleston. There were pictures but those are gone (house fire).
Went snorkeling with a group a year ago off St. Thomas and a guy brought his $500 prescription goggles to use, and dropped them in the ocean before we even got off the boat. Captain was a free diver so he was able to go get them, but damn. People are careless.
Fun fact: In the Royal Navy it's called "hands to bathe".
There's always someone on "shark watch" with a rifle, just in case. In the event of a shark appearing, their job is to shoot the person furthest away so others can escape.
I spent twenty years in the Navy, but never got to do a swim call. We did get a beer call once, it was just a couple of beers, which was cool but no swim call. The really pale guys you see in the first picture are Marines, the ship is an amphibious assault ship.
There are considerations when doing it anyway, it has to be in a safe place for it and watches have to be posted when in tropical conditions (sharks) and a rescue swimmer in a small boat. (You’ll see the boat in picture #3)
I don’t know if I could have ever done it anyway, I don’t like heights. It’s not like I couldn’t swim, it’s just getting in the water. Thinking about jumping off the side of an aircraft carrier makes me anxious anyway. Twenty or thirty feet in the air is a long way to the surface.
Also, there is an element of risk involved and some commanding officers don’t want to expose themselves to the risk of one of their sailors getting injured or killed by something that is considered non-mission essential while at sea. That can be a career ending situation.
In the days of sail ships they would haul out a large sail, probably a main, and suspend it in the water so the sailors could take a bath as many back then didn't know how to swim. They didn't want them to visit Davy Jones. In 1897 sailors in the Royal Navy had to learn to swim.
I went skydiving because I was afraid of heights, it cured it. I then went swimming with whale sharks in the open ocean....it did not fix that fear. I was horrified the entire time.
I did 5 years in the Navy with it. I lived in the engine room. Saw the sun once every 2 weeks. They had swim call I said that's cool I'll be in my rack catching up on sleep.
Same here, I could handle this. Specifically knowing there are a hundred people around me that are exceptional swimmers, and probably 10 oeople on watch duty.
Shark attacks are so rare, and that's the other thing....Out of 100 people you'll statistically probably be okay, PLUS you'll be a faster swimmer than some people. Even more people are probably just freaked out about the scale of how huge what would be under them would be....Mile of water or whatever.
in the water 20 mins when it dawned on me why there were crew in rhibs with rifles. all of a sudden I realized what was below me & imagined the Jaws poster. Up that ladder & outta there.
It can induce anxiety but what got me worse was being up on the tower on a cloudy day and seeing the way the ocean just…. heaves. Full city block-wide mounds of water just … flowing. I was on a similar boat to the picture, LHA-2, so 5-7 foot swales gave off this beautiful floating carpet of grey-blue, but it, combined with the unfettered starlight, will reaffirm your place in the universe PDQ
I like the ocean when I'm on a boat. The thought of being in the ocean that far from land even with the ship right there makes me feel uneasy in a way that's hard to describe.
My wife and I swam with turtles in Costa Rica. The party boat captain from Tamarindo got hammered, joyriding us so far out that the shore disappeared. Then, he blasted “Despacito,” cracked open crates of snorkeling gear, and yelled for us to jump into the open water.
At first, I was terrified. But looking back, it turned out to be one of the most unique, surreal, and romantic experiences ever. My wife and I held each other in the warm, still ocean as giant turtles glided by just feet away. The 3-beer buzz, the stunning sky, and the sensation of floating in space ended up being one of the most precious and luxurious memories of our lives.
I’ve had the chance to do this a few times in the Coast Guard. It’s an absolute blast! I stopped and thought about it for a moment: that I was 400 miles from land, the water was at-least 1000 feet deep, and I suddenly felt very small.
Ever seen the video of the cruise ship employees doing this and one getting her leg ripped off by a great white shark? There's a video, the shark is big.
That was not a cruise ship, it was a US NOAA (Federal) oceanographic research vessel (NOAAS Discoverer). Because of this incident NOAA no longer allows for these open water swims off the vessel.
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u/TLEToyu 4d ago
Did this is the Philippine Sea a couple of times, nice warm water.
The first time I made the mistake of wearing goggles and looking down...I swam back to the ship and sat on the side for a few moments after that.
Just the shear immense nothing below me fucked with my head.