SmpleGreen
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I have gotten a lot out of reading about incidents from others in the past on this board, in addition to reading books like "Diver Down". I had hoped not to ever have occasion to post here, but ce la vie, $&#& happens.
Over the weekend I was doing my first technical diving course. This was my first time diving doubles (bp/w/dir setup) on a rented rig (I had taken it to the pool once a couple days before). All of our dives were at a quarry with max depth around 300 ft.
The first day we hung out around 30ft and did some skills, including isolation drills with our doubles, ooa diver drills (reg sharing), flooded mask swims, etc. During these drills I made a number of changes to my setup, including renting a pair of ankle weights, as my rig was very heavy and my attitude in the water was for my feet to float up above my tanks. By the end of the day I felt pretty comfortable with the rig in the water, with the one exception of not being able to reach my bottom dump valve because it was being covered by my deco bottle (and the string to the dump valve had been cut short...I guess to prevent entanglement issues).
The next dive was going to be our first to depth, around 90ft max. We made our pre dive plan, which included doing isolation drills at the bottom of the line, followed by practice doing deco stops from depth on the way back.
We descended the line, and at around 40 ft I started to feel the thermocline. By the time I reached 75 ft, I was starting to feel extremely cold, and was questioning whether my rented wetsuit was thick enough for conditions (5/7 mil wetsuit in 39F water). The cold made me hyperventilate slightly, and I slowed down my descent to recover. When I reached 90 ft on the line, I was breathing rather rapidly due to the cold, and when asked for an ok from the instructor, I signaled I needed a minute. I slowed my breathing and recovered my composure, and then gave the ok.The instructor went away from the line to see to the other students, and I stuck on the line for a bit because I was feeling too negatively buoyant. I slowly added air to my wing, but it didn't really seem like anything was happening. When the instructor asked for an ok again, I signaled that I wasn't sure about my wing inflation , and the instructor came over and added a bunch of air to my wing and got me to neutral buoyancy.
At this point I left the line and watched the instructor doing isolation drills with one of the students. As I was floating neutral watching the drills, I realized that my core and extremities were very cold, and my breathing was restricted as a result. Even at rest, I was having a difficult time taking slow controlled breaths. My mask was also flooding intermittently, which wasn't helping with my thermal issues. I signaled to another student that I was having issues, and gave the sign that I wanted to ascend. I then went over the the instructor and did the same. He signaled to wait, as a student was in the middle of an isolation drill. I hung and waited for the drill to finish, which took a minute or two. At this point, the instructor signaled that it was time to go, and I signaled that I could no longer see the downline, which I assumed we would be using to ascend. The instructor pointed in a direction away from the line, for us to follow an incline towards shallower depths. Given my issues, I would have preferred to ascend up the line, but I decided to follow the instructor without objection.
After ascending upward about 20ft, I started becoming extremely positively buoyant, as all the air that was dumped into my wing at depth began to expand (I was extremely negative at 90). The result was that I started accelerating upwards very rapidly. I tried using my wing dump valve to release air, but it did not seem to be working ( it is likely I didn't have the correct orientation for the dump valve to purge properly... I was facing pretty straight up due to the ankle weights). At the same time, I was rapidly accelerating towards the surface. I realized the if I wasn't able to get my dump to work in 5 seconds or so, I was going to rocket to the surface uncontrollably. I decided to flip head down and swim for the bottom, to arrest my ascent and hopefully get to a depth where the air in the wing would recompress and I could control my buoyancy.
Upon flipping, enough pressure went to the bottom dump (the one I couldn't reach) that I felt some air release out the back of the wing, and I was able to make downward progress. However, upon flipping over and kicking downwards my mask flooded, and I lost one fin. At this point I was fully hyperventilating and working very hard to keep from aspirating water through my nose. I was more or less singly focused on swimming downward to a depth where I could stop my ascent and attempt to correct my numerous other issues.
My instructor caught me around 60 feet, and signaled me for an ok (I didn't see this at the time). I couldn't see anything through my mask, and latched onto him to attempt to stabilize myself and regain breath control; I was more of less fully panicked at this point. Because of my lack of response, he concluded that it would be best to reconnect my inflator hose (apparently it had become undone in the chaos), and inflate my wing to send me to the surface. I was unaware that he was doing this, but did feel myself ascending and was now focused fully on continuing to breathe (the hyperventilation gave me the sensation that I was not getting enough air). I had a tight grip on the instructor, so we both headed to the surface.
We reached the surface, and the instructor asked if I had continued to breathe out during the ascent, to check for possible embolism. I responded that I had been hyperventilating during the ascent (but had not held my breath).
I then went on 50% O2 for 10 minutes. I didn't feel any signs of embolism or DCS.
I will post later with my lessons learned from this experience, in addition to a few more specific details on what happened (from computer download.... Currently some of this info is reconstructed from info gleaned from instructor, in addition to my own very imperfect recollection. The actual depths at which some of this took place can be filled in when I DL from my computer, in addition to ascent rate specifics, etc).
In the meantime, would be interested in thoughts from the board. I made a number of very serious mistakes on this dive that brought me as close as I've ever come to ending up another quarry statistic. I think given the two fresh postings of quarry accidents on this board (with one confirmed fatality) on the exact same day that this happened (oct 2) make it very I important that these incidents be analyzed for lessons learned.
Over the weekend I was doing my first technical diving course. This was my first time diving doubles (bp/w/dir setup) on a rented rig (I had taken it to the pool once a couple days before). All of our dives were at a quarry with max depth around 300 ft.
The first day we hung out around 30ft and did some skills, including isolation drills with our doubles, ooa diver drills (reg sharing), flooded mask swims, etc. During these drills I made a number of changes to my setup, including renting a pair of ankle weights, as my rig was very heavy and my attitude in the water was for my feet to float up above my tanks. By the end of the day I felt pretty comfortable with the rig in the water, with the one exception of not being able to reach my bottom dump valve because it was being covered by my deco bottle (and the string to the dump valve had been cut short...I guess to prevent entanglement issues).
The next dive was going to be our first to depth, around 90ft max. We made our pre dive plan, which included doing isolation drills at the bottom of the line, followed by practice doing deco stops from depth on the way back.
We descended the line, and at around 40 ft I started to feel the thermocline. By the time I reached 75 ft, I was starting to feel extremely cold, and was questioning whether my rented wetsuit was thick enough for conditions (5/7 mil wetsuit in 39F water). The cold made me hyperventilate slightly, and I slowed down my descent to recover. When I reached 90 ft on the line, I was breathing rather rapidly due to the cold, and when asked for an ok from the instructor, I signaled I needed a minute. I slowed my breathing and recovered my composure, and then gave the ok.The instructor went away from the line to see to the other students, and I stuck on the line for a bit because I was feeling too negatively buoyant. I slowly added air to my wing, but it didn't really seem like anything was happening. When the instructor asked for an ok again, I signaled that I wasn't sure about my wing inflation , and the instructor came over and added a bunch of air to my wing and got me to neutral buoyancy.
At this point I left the line and watched the instructor doing isolation drills with one of the students. As I was floating neutral watching the drills, I realized that my core and extremities were very cold, and my breathing was restricted as a result. Even at rest, I was having a difficult time taking slow controlled breaths. My mask was also flooding intermittently, which wasn't helping with my thermal issues. I signaled to another student that I was having issues, and gave the sign that I wanted to ascend. I then went over the the instructor and did the same. He signaled to wait, as a student was in the middle of an isolation drill. I hung and waited for the drill to finish, which took a minute or two. At this point, the instructor signaled that it was time to go, and I signaled that I could no longer see the downline, which I assumed we would be using to ascend. The instructor pointed in a direction away from the line, for us to follow an incline towards shallower depths. Given my issues, I would have preferred to ascend up the line, but I decided to follow the instructor without objection.
After ascending upward about 20ft, I started becoming extremely positively buoyant, as all the air that was dumped into my wing at depth began to expand (I was extremely negative at 90). The result was that I started accelerating upwards very rapidly. I tried using my wing dump valve to release air, but it did not seem to be working ( it is likely I didn't have the correct orientation for the dump valve to purge properly... I was facing pretty straight up due to the ankle weights). At the same time, I was rapidly accelerating towards the surface. I realized the if I wasn't able to get my dump to work in 5 seconds or so, I was going to rocket to the surface uncontrollably. I decided to flip head down and swim for the bottom, to arrest my ascent and hopefully get to a depth where the air in the wing would recompress and I could control my buoyancy.
Upon flipping, enough pressure went to the bottom dump (the one I couldn't reach) that I felt some air release out the back of the wing, and I was able to make downward progress. However, upon flipping over and kicking downwards my mask flooded, and I lost one fin. At this point I was fully hyperventilating and working very hard to keep from aspirating water through my nose. I was more or less singly focused on swimming downward to a depth where I could stop my ascent and attempt to correct my numerous other issues.
My instructor caught me around 60 feet, and signaled me for an ok (I didn't see this at the time). I couldn't see anything through my mask, and latched onto him to attempt to stabilize myself and regain breath control; I was more of less fully panicked at this point. Because of my lack of response, he concluded that it would be best to reconnect my inflator hose (apparently it had become undone in the chaos), and inflate my wing to send me to the surface. I was unaware that he was doing this, but did feel myself ascending and was now focused fully on continuing to breathe (the hyperventilation gave me the sensation that I was not getting enough air). I had a tight grip on the instructor, so we both headed to the surface.
We reached the surface, and the instructor asked if I had continued to breathe out during the ascent, to check for possible embolism. I responded that I had been hyperventilating during the ascent (but had not held my breath).
I then went on 50% O2 for 10 minutes. I didn't feel any signs of embolism or DCS.
I will post later with my lessons learned from this experience, in addition to a few more specific details on what happened (from computer download.... Currently some of this info is reconstructed from info gleaned from instructor, in addition to my own very imperfect recollection. The actual depths at which some of this took place can be filled in when I DL from my computer, in addition to ascent rate specifics, etc).
In the meantime, would be interested in thoughts from the board. I made a number of very serious mistakes on this dive that brought me as close as I've ever come to ending up another quarry statistic. I think given the two fresh postings of quarry accidents on this board (with one confirmed fatality) on the exact same day that this happened (oct 2) make it very I important that these incidents be analyzed for lessons learned.
