Hit 500 hours underwater last week and it hit me different

Logged my 500th bottom hour on a bridge repair job in Norfolk. Felt weird. That's like 20 straight days staring at murky water for what? A paycheck?

3 comments

3 Comments

jamieb801mo ago

Oh man, 500 hours is a solid milestone but something about the math is bugging me. 500 hours is actually closer to 21 straight days if you're counting 24-hour days, but I'm guessing you meant work days. Most commercial dive jobs run 6 to 8 hour bottom times, so that's more like 60 to 80 work days underwater. Still a lot of time staring into the green stuff though. I get what you're saying about the paycheck part - it hits different when you realize how much of your life just disappeared into silt and current.

alicecraig1mo ago

800 hours of bottom time actually changes how you see the whole thing. I knew a guy who did 1,200 hours on pipeline work in the Gulf and he said the paychecks just became numbers after a while. You're right that the math on work days versus real days matters, but I think you're selling it short to just count hours like a clock. The real cost is in the decompression stops, the surface intervals, and the way you spend your off hours just recovering from the cold and the pressure. If you add that in, 500 hours of actual bottom time probably works out to closer to 150 full days of your life tied up in the job from start to finish.

wade2501mo ago

150 days lost to decompression and coffee.

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