In Rota, Spain, there is an artificial harbor where the fishermen park their boats overnight. There is a sea wall made of giant blocks of concrete that were dumped into the sea, with a little street/sidewalk type of deal on top of the wall. The wall forms the harbor. The fishermen store nets and things, on top of the wall.
During the daytime, layabout local children and idle sailors stationed at Base Naval de Rota (a Spanish submarine base) will sometimes go hang out on the wall because it’s nice over there with the view and whatnot. Also because it’s a diving spot and swimming area without any waves.
The tide in that harbor is 3 meters from high to low. Then there’s a couple meters of wall out of the water, so at low tide you can have a pretty nice 5m or so jump down to the water. During the day, this is all fun & games.
My buddy and I took our girlfriends to this jumping spot on the wall at night once. There’s no lights in the harbor at night. There was no moon that night, either. It was dark when our motorcycle headlights switched off. But we had come to jump and swim and it was unthinkable to chicken out in front of the girls, right?
So he jumped. He lied and said it was fine, and I jumped . . . off a solid concrete wall I could barely see, out over a pitch-black nothing of water. I looked down, and there was literally nothing. Look up, there’s literally nothing. No lights, no clouds, no moon, everything is black darkness and I’m falling in it. It was horrible. And then an hour and 5 meters later I splashed down into black water. I couldn’t see anything. After a brief swim to the surface, we both lied to the girls and said it was fine, and they jumped.
We climbed out, and left. The girls were not amused. Nobody jumped twice.
Vote for David 