Some things that I haven't learned yet

[sambolino44]

...I was trying to keep at bay a slight sense of anxiety...

To me (the buddy) this is one of the key points to remember. Almost every time something bad has happened, I can think back and remember that I had bad vibes beforehand, and didn't do something about it!

Thinking back, I also remember that my head was quite a bit of a ways up my *** before we descended. I guess I got impatient waiting for the current to slow down. I definitely remember while we were hanging out in the cove waiting for the current to slow down saying, "OK, let's wait about ten minutes and go." and then less than two minutes later, "OK, that's long enough, let's go!" As it turns out, if the current turned at all (I think it did, eventually) we were still about an hour early. So, even if my buddy had communicated her bad vibes, who knows, in my state of mind, if I would have responded appropriately?

Now, as far as communication before the dive goes, we planned this dive to death the night before. But even though we went through multiple scenarios and contingencies with rock bottoms, NDLs, gas plans, AND tides and currents, in hindsight it looks like we still didn't study the site conditions well enough. We have a book (The Whidbey Island Dive Guide, available at our LDS, Whidbey Island Dive Center that gives tide and current information for this site, but instead I just used my favorite tide and current prediction website (TBone). It has a lot of locations where they've made corrections from the NOAA tide stations, and I like the neat graphics, but when it doesn't have a location I want, instead of trying to find a correction for that location somewhere else, I'll try to do my own extrapolation from the locations on TBone. In this case, that didn't work. Or, more likely, like Lynne and Bob pointed out, it was that we were trying to dive the site with a low tidal exchange, which made the current unpredictable.

So what does all that have to do with "communication before the dive"? Maybe I was "communicated" out. Overload! Too much! Basta! Not that this is an excuse; I only bring it up as something to look out for next time.

Anyway, we survived, and learned some things. But, to get back to the topic of this thread, what are the things that I still haven't learned? Listen to your gut!

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

With this site, if there's ever a doubt, call Bob and Kelly at Anacortes Diving and Supply ... it's their backyard and I don't know anybody with better local knowledge of the tides and conditions there.

But yeah, you have a good point. There can be such a thing as too much planning ... to the point where you start to tune out that little voice that might be telling you "maybe this ain't such a good idea".

Been there, done that, a few times ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[sambolino44]

One more thing...
I just want everybody to know that I'm really proud of how Soakelontra was able to recover from a near-panic situation. Yes, we both made mistakes going in; we didn't study the site well enough to know that a low exchange was not good, she didn't communicate her anxiety to me at the beginning, and I was impatient to go ahead and begin the dive. But what made the difference between a good story and a tragedy was that, after she "lost her cool", and then lost her buoyancy control, when I pulled her down, I have a very clear memory of her calming herself and re-gaining control of herself. I could see it in her eyes, and in her breathing; she was saying to herself, "Slow down! Breathe slowly! Calm down!" Exactly what you're supposed to do in a situation like that, and it worked! We never got into an uncontrolled ascent, and we were able to continue the dive at a shallower depth and enjoy it.

 

[TSandM]

It isn't a good thing to have gotten that stressed, but I can speak from experience that having been through that WILL pay off in the long run. Once you have learned that you can shut up the reptile brain when it is screaming to get out of there, you will be faster to shut it down the next time.

I can say from experience that having a near-panic event in one of my OW dives has been one of the best training things that ever happened to me. I have never panicked since, and the one time I felt it coming, I knew what it was and got it stopped.

 

[Soakedlontra]

It isn't a good thing to have gotten that stressed, but I can speak from experience that having been through that WILL pay off in the long run. Once you have learned that you can shut up the reptile brain when it is screaming to get out of there, you will be faster to shut it down the next time.

I can say from experience that having a near-panic event in one of my OW dives has been one of the best training things that ever happened to me. I have never panicked since, and the one time I felt it coming, I knew what it was and got it stopped.

I really hope that it is going to be the case. If my memory is bad enough on land, underwater it sometimes becomes ten times worse!or memory has little to do with the survival instinct that makes you do things that otherwise you would not be able to do?

It was like being on a bad trip on LSD and I have never used recreational drugs. I have just read and heard of their effects on the brain. Without knowing it this dive turned out to be a kind of 'rite-of-passage' with a good ending.

To the new divers like me out there please do not feel tempted to put yourself in that situation deliberately by reading this post!

One other thing I want to stress is: this experience has showed me what a difference between a buddy who is committed to work as a team and a buddy who just want to be a 'same-ocean-buddy' can make! I was able to regain control of my breathing and mental state because somehow I managed to stop the workings of stress and anxiety and move on while the help from my buddy and his physical presence contributed to the whole process of recovery as well.

 

[Soakedlontra]

I haven't learned how to wear the undergarment properly. The seal of my wrists did not touch the skin but the sleeves of my top. I did not realize it until it was too late. While messing around with the suit valves underwater I felt water trickling down my right arm. Later it found its way to my torso and at the end of the dive to my feet too.

I felt that I arched my back a lot to compensate for a tendency to roll on one side if I moved my body awkwardly. Maybe I need to put two weights on my back plate and take some off from the belt?

I adjusted my buoyancy with the suit valves. I hardly touched the inflator hose of the wing. I did not end up head down and feet up. I pretty much kept a horizontal position. I tried to put myself vertical and I could feel the air in the suit going up to my shoulders and becoming positive buoyant. I got myself horizontal again.

Was I warmer? It's hard to tell. I wore a thick woolly jumper and even if it got wet the dampness did not make me shivering. I feel I did not have enough undergarment overall, though. I was only in 30 ft of 50F water with a visibility between 3 and 5 feet.

I felt squeeze on my legs from the beginning to the end of the dive no matter how much air I was putting in the suit. Do I have to get rid of the squeeze completely? but then would I not become too buoyant?

The major issue for me right now is to understand the relationship between the bubble in the wing and the bubble in the suit. How much do I mess with the inflator hose of the wing and how much with the valves of the suit?

 

[TSandM]

Yes, it's important to get the seals to sit smoothly on your skin -- I've gotten fabric caught in my neck seal before, which definitely results in a wet dive!

It is not necessary to get rid of all the squeeze. You just want enough gas in the suit to make it loose enough to allow you to be comfortably mobile. If your legs were uncomfortably squeezed when you had enough gas in your torso and arms to feel good, then you got a piece of information -- your legs are below you! (Air will always rise to the uppermost portions of the suit.)

There are basically three ways to deal with the bubble in the wing and the bubble in the suit, and each has its advantages and disadvantages. You can use the suit entirely for buoyancy, and only use the wing on the surface. The advantage to this is that the suit is loose and comfortable, you are warmer, and it gives you only one gas collection to manage. The disadvantage is that you have to be VERY careful about the positions you assume in the water, because you have a lot of gas that can move quickly to your feet, and you have to be VERY vigilant about venting as you ascend, because it's easy for the gas expansion to get away from you.

You can put the bare minimum of gas in the suit to be adequately mobile, and use the wing for buoyancy. The advantage to this is that the wing is easy to vent rapidly, and is a smaller air collection with less dynamic instability. The disadvantage is that you get colder, and you still have to manage the gas in the suit.

Or you can combine the two, putting gas in the suit to some parameter of your own (adequate warmth, or some kind of mobility goal) and putting anything else that's needed in the wing. This has the disadvantages of both strategies, but is what I end up doing with doubles, because I can't carry enough gas in the suit for neutral buoyancy at the beginning of the dive. With enough experience, it isn't hard to do, but I wouldn't recommend this approach to a drysuit novice.

 

[sambolino44]

OK, now for the two cents from the dive buddy! I thought Soakedlontra did great for a first dive, and before taking the class! She stayed very close to horizontal almost the whole time, never lost control, and her buoyancy control was better than mine, as far as hovering and not touching stuff. I felt bad about not checking her wrist seals before we got in the water, but hey, I know she'll remember to check them next time!

One thing we were dealing with is that there wasn't very much room between the bottom and the thermocline; probably less than ten feet. So there wasn't a lot of room to experiment with getting vertical and seeing how the bubble moves around.

If she's horizontal it's easier to get all the air out of her suit than her wing, because the suit vent is rotated around to the side of her arm (like I wish mine was!), and with the bungee loop on her inflator hose, she really has to yank it up to get the hose straight enough to let all the air out. I think we can work on that bungee arrangement and improve that situation.

So what haven't I learned yet? Uh, there must be something...

 

[on_two_wheels]

Ha!!! I still remember my first open water dive. My instructor and I meet at the beach. It's not long before he asks me where my inflator hose is on the 1st stage. Two lessons learned at once. 1) Always check my gear (even after a pro shop puts it together, e.g. 1st/2nd stage). 2) Do an equipment check before leaving home.

I actually do a head to toe check with gear in the bag already. Once it's in there, I'll check hood, suit, gloves, boots, goggles, fins in that order every time. Then i check BC, weights and anything extra such as lights, camera, marker, etc. Last, I'll check the pressure in the tank. Then I hook up my reg and breath from both primary and octo a few breaths to make sure they're working and that the computer is registering correctly. Then I immediately put it in the bag.

I do not use a list but since doing it this way, I've never forgotten anything that would stop me from diving. Yeah, I could end up forgetting the camera or something but I'm certainly going to be blowing bubbles that day!!!

 

[TSandM]

If she's horizontal it's easier to get all the air out of her suit than her wing, because the suit vent is rotated around to the side of her arm

One of the things I really liked about that suit was that, if you played your cards right, you could position your arm right and make your entire ascent without thinking about venting, because the suit would essentially "auto-vent" from the valve position. They did a good job of siting the valve on those suits.