Well, at least I didn't have to clean my wet suit and I am alive?

[Scared Spitless]

Well here it is for anyone who wishes to comment. I hope someone else reads this, remembers this and doesn’t make my mistake.

Diving Molokini Crater back wall. Captain gave a nice brief...a bit of surge near wall, so we will drop you off a little ways off the wall, descend to 100 ft., and DM will lead you around wall, show you the sights. DM will slowly ascend as you make your way along wall, and show you the sights. About 500-700 PSI let the DM know and you can ascend by yourself, swim away from wall so you stay out of surge near surface. One of us will hold up our hand when we see you, and boat will pick you up. Last person ascend with DM. Safety stop... Viz was great he said, blue water. Bottom of wall is aprox 300 ft. In blue water, away from wall it's difficult to judge depth. Watch your depth (repeated more than once)!!!!! DM gave a nice brief about possible sights, signs, etc.

I am someone who sweats a lot, seem to have a nuclear reactor inside. Getting warm, and didn't want to even think about being queasy (I did have a Transderm Scop patch on)...boat was rocking, and I wanted to be off boat, not rocking and cool down. I was first off boat, buddy was second. I had mentioned to buddy that I wanted to descend ASAP, he said fine.

I was descending and saw the DM waving me up. DM ascended right away. Looked at gauge and I was lucky I didn't soil my wetsuit...I was at 167 ft.
Details: gauge started timing at 12 ft. (2956 PSI), hit 166.2 at 2:06 (2606), was back at 130.8 at 2:34 (2478 PSI), stopped ascending at 100 ft at 3:12 (2392 PSI). There were portions of that ascent which were faster than 60 FPM. Gauge shows one fourteen second section of the ascent was over 60 FPM, followed by four seconds at 51-60 FPM and sixteen seconds over 60 FPM. I am a bit of a Hoover, SAC range over last twenty or so dives is .605 to .943 FT3 per minute, dive in question says .843 FT3 per minute (according to my VT3 Oceanlog ver. 2.2.)

I have a little over 50 dives now, was originally certified in 1990, refresher fall of 2007. Max depth since refresher was 111 FT..

I have been over this incident a million times in my head, and I am still upset by my mistakes. What I screwed up, as I can see: Should have stayed with dive buddy. If my buddy had been ready right behind me, another 60 seconds on the surface probably wouldn’t have been a problem. Or perhaps should have agreed to descend to 25 feet where I suspect the surge would have stopped, and waited for buddy. I heard the Captain say the blue water and distance from the wall made depth perception a problem, but I didn’t utilize my usual memory trick of repeating important information to myself several times (my attention span can be far less than average, depending on the situation.) I don’t have my advanced cert. Requirements for the dive were twenty five dives or more. I realize requirements are different from experience required to complete a dive. Obviously I wasn’t competent to satisfactorily complete the dive. I let me ego trounce my brain.

Was I narced? I don’t know. I wasn’t watching my gauge, perhaps that would be one indication of being narced. I did recognize the signal from the DM, and ascended. I don’t drink (due to meds for arthritis) and it’s been a while since I have had a drink, but I didn’t feel like I was drunk. Maybe I did feel like everything was “fine.” My dive computer is set to sound an alarm at 130 ft. (changed to 120 FT after this dive), it should have sounded for ten seconds unless I canceled it by pressing a button for two seconds (which I don’t recall.) Maybe I missed the alarm. I wish the alarm would let me choose the alarm length*. At times I feel like my computer is alarming too often. Turn pressure, end pressure, and most of all ascending too fast.

Again I hope someone learns from this. And I would like to hear others thoughts on what I screwed up.

I would also like to hear your thoughts of might of happened if the DM hadn’t dove down, and I had descended to the bottom of the wall—Not that I ever want to do that! I had a 100 CF FT tank. Scubapro MK V and Balanced Adjustable (R109) which was serviced prior to this trip. I wear a weight belt, which I would not have any problems dropping. Don’t ever want to be there again, but I wonder if one is separated from buddy, and is OOA, doing a CESA, would it be wise to remove weight belt and hold off to side?

And yes, the DM had a rather large tip that day, even considering I am know for large tips.

Fire away and call me,

Just a fool, or feeling stupid

*I was thinking of audible altimeters for skydivers. They have multiple adjustable alarms, and the last alarm is usually a screaming wail, as I understand it. I really wish I had more control over the alarms, I would probably choose to make some alarms constant until canceled, and others self cancel after so many seconds, or until canceled.

 

[nereas]

Depth perception in really clear water is a problem. Unless you watch your depth gauge, you won't know how deep you are going. I like to check it periodically, especially on a deep dive.

Sounds like you were having fun. Must have given the D/M quite a fright!

 

[PerroneFord]

The Transderm patch has been noted to cause problems for divers in the past, but this seems like a procedural issue to me. Actually, a number of them.

1. Not descending with buddy.
2. Not performing any kind of in-water safety check
3. Not maintaining an eye on depth during descent
4. Poor ascent rates. You had 2600psi at 166ft. What was the rush?
5. Solo ascent (but given the circumstances, understandable)

I have no alarms set and prefer it that way. Use your brain and good procedures, and the alarms become an unnecessary annoyance. Sounds to me that endeavoring to pause every 25ft or so on descent with your buddy would solve nearly everything that went wrong here.

 

[tfsails]

Hey--you lived to tell about it; you realize the mistakes you made. You learned a valuable
lesson(s) from this incident. You will not ever repeat it--unless you're a dunderhead.

Your high-rate ascents were made at a depth where high-rate ascents are not critically dangerous. Had you made those ascents at the top of the water column, you might not have lived to tell this tale.

All in all, I'd say you got yourself a hard-earned education that day and you earned it. Congratulations on surviving. Now, do yourself a favor and go get your AOW. If nothing else, you'll get that much more training and that is never a bad thing. At least you'll be exposed to what your narcosis reactions feel like.

 

[ianr33]

Where do you wear your computer? I have mine on my right wrist. Makes checking depth very easy.

Glad it turned out O.K.

 

[Noboundaries]

Many times in my comments I've made comparisons between flying and diving. The aviation safety rags in the Navy stated that the period pilots were most prone to pilot error incidents or crashes occurred between getting winged (300 hours) and 800 hours of total logged flight time (on average about 170 to 460 flights). The reason is that they tend to put their habitual routines on automatic once they are on their own, and when something unexpected takes them out of their normal habit patterns, they are already so far behind the event mentally (we called it the "power curve") that they cannot catch it in time to avoid damage, injury, or worse.

Yes, the automatic nature it is ego driven. More importantly it is discipline controlled. I used to tell my flight students that when everything is so routine and familiar you can do things without thinking, you will. The first casualty of routine is repetition. Repetition, as mundane as it is, is the one thing that will catch developing problems. When you lose repetition, you just started gambling with your life. When you catch that happening, stop it and focus deeper on the most routine procedures. That's where you'll learn to be a professional and learn nuances about yourself and your equipment you never knew existed.

In diving that habitual "danger range" is probably between OW cert and 200 dives. Every time you step out of your comfort zone into a new or unfamiliar experience (low vis, night, cold water, bad weather, long layoff, seasickness, etc) you need to focus harder on the mundane. Every time you add another environment (wreck, cave, ice, etc) you extend that danger range and additional demand for focus/repetition.

My wife and I only have 44 dives total, all logged in the last year. My wife has already learned about the habitual trap and the lesson I described above. She's made minor mistakes that helped her realize the possible consequences from her loss of focus. As a result she's learned to focus on the the little things, and to do so repetitively.

Me? I focus, but I do have one problem that rears its head on almost every trip. I forget to unbungee my tank on the first boat dive. Yep, I'm a rookie. So my wife and I have added the "stupid friggin' bungee check" to our pre-dive sequence.

Happy you're still here Spitless.

 

[H2ODog]

Thanks for posting your experience and glad you're OK. I don't like to admit my mistakes to others and probably wouldn't post it but would definitely learn from it.

 

[leapfrog]

Hey. We all have had experiences and made mistakes. Get back in the water ASAP and just enjoy. The important thing is that you know the mistakes and have recognized them. I agree with the post about extra training, it never hurts.

 

[scubadale]

I am someone who sweats a lot, seem to have a nuclear reactor inside. Getting warm, and didn't want to even think about being queasy (I did have a Transderm Scop patch on)...boat was rocking, and I wanted to be off boat, not rocking and cool down. I was first off boat, buddy was second. I had mentioned to buddy that I wanted to descend ASAP, he said fine.

Don't be to hard on yourself. We appreciate what we can learn from your incident (I think we would all rather learn from an incident than an accident).

I have a little different take and that deals with what was going on at the surface. I was hot and on a rocking boat that led to me feeding the fishes over the side. I was told you will be better once your in the water - that wasn't true.

Was it that you were hot and therefore that was your only focus? If that then rather than descending ASAP, cool off at the surface prior to descent. If it was that your patch wasn't working to well then maybe calling the dive was in order. Granted feeling crappy on a boat isn't fun but it is better than feeling crappy at 300'.

Just thoughts for next time.

Again thanks for posting.

 

[scubadale]

Also see this is your first post. Welcome to Scubaboard.