What do folks make of this one...

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RJP

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From California Diver Magazine. I'm assuming the name of the boat was "The Charlie Foxtrot" based on this story...

"Make sure the anchor isn’t fouled up on the wreck, and it if is, move it off into the sand” were the last words from the captain as we gave the “thumbs down” sign, and began our descent to the wreck below.
Leveling out at 120 feet, we saw that the anchor was indeed caught up in the wreck, and would be almost impossible to reel back in after the dive. Between us, we managed to release the anchor and haul it off into the sand a short distance away, but still easily visible so we could find it at the end of the dive.

The wreck we were diving on is located in the San Pedro bay area, which is home to a very busy shipping lane, the Catalina Express ferries and a large number of other private craft, so ascending back up our anchor line was a very high priority as we did not want to be drifting freely with just our safety sausage for protection. After a very nice 30 minute dive, we slowly made our way back to where the anchor was supposed to be, only to find no sign of it. After a few minutes searching, my heart sank as I saw a small line in the sand caused by the anchor dragging across the seabed; for how long I had no idea.


ASCENDING WITHOUT A LINE


We followed the trail in the sand for fifty feet or so, but with still no sight of the anchor, were forced to abandon our search and perform a free ascent next to the busiest shipping lane in the U.S., and with a 15 minute decompression obligation, we couldn’t even ascend directly to the surface, making this ascent even more perilous.


We swam back to the wreck before starting our ascent, with the hope that our dive boat would still be over the wreck and would have a greater chance of locating us with our safety sausage. At this point, we encountered two rebreather divers who had also been unable to locate the anchor. We decided to ascend as a group to avoid spreading divers out all over the ocean, making it easier for the boat to retrieve us. We began our ascent, moving as fast as we could yet still making our required decompression stops. The sausage was shot up from around 70 feet to give the boat a good chance of spotting it.


Reaching our twenty-foot deco stop (our longest), we all switched to our oxygen bottles for ten minutes of decompression, followed by a 6 minute slow ascent to the surface. The CCR divers we were with had less of a decompression obligation than we did, so they had already surfaced by this point. 7 minutes into our deco stop, the boat still had not arrived to pick them up, which, given that we only had 11 divers in the water, was somewhat worrying. We opted to cut our decompression short in order to have a better chance of surfacing near the dive boat, and slowly ascended to the surface.

To my surprise, our dive boat was merely a speck on the horizon, and the formerly flat surface of the bay had now turned into 2-3 feet of wind-chopped surface and white caps.


Even worse, I could see we were heading directly into the path taken by the Catalina Express ferry, which would have little to no chance of avoiding us.

From this distance, there was simply no way our boat could spot our 3 foot sausage. In rapid succession, two other sausages appeared on the surface (we had been the first team to descend, and therefore the first to surface) and I could only hope the other divers would minimize their decompression as much as safely possible.



MORE PROBLEMS SURFACE

One diver had a larger 6 foot sausage, which we inflated and waved above us, hoping to attract the attention of our dive boat, and it was at this point that the sharp pain in my right forearm started. At first, I thought it was just a twinge caused by me trying to move fast on the surface, but rapidly the pain increased, spreading toward my elbow, and I knew I’d taken a Type I DCS hit. “I’ve taken a hit” I told the rest of the team, and I could see the level of concern in their eyes. “How bad is it?” “Bearable” I said, wincing as I deployed my Oxygen bottle to at least try to stop the pain from escalating.


Fortunately for us, our yelling and waving had attracted the attention of a passing fishing boat, which sped over to us. The occupants of the boat seemed quite surprised to see us drifting across the bay but were going to prove to be our salvation. We asked them to hail our dive boat on the radio, but after multiple attempts, they were unable to get a response.


The only solution was to have the fishing boat motor over to our dive boat and alert them, but that would mean the loss of our only protection from boat traffic, since the fishing boat was far too small for us to clamber into.

Meanwhile, the pain in my right arm had not increased, but definitely had not diminished, and I was forced to switch to my buddy’s oxygen tank, as I had drained mine. The fishing boat sped off, and we settled in to wait. By this point, it seemed the other teams were going to complete their original decompression schedules instead of shortening, so we all grouped together around their sausages.



DIVE BOAT RETURNS

It seemed to take forever, but finally our dive boat surged into motion and started to head toward us. The fishing boat was faster though, and thankfully came back to protect us. “Are there any more of you?” they asked us, and luckily someone realized that one teams sausage had not inflated properly and was almost impossible to see from any distance away.

“Over there” he said, directing the fishing boat, which hovered over that team to mark their location.

From then on, things happened very fast. Divers started to surface, we stripped off our decompression bottles, handed them up we made our way back onboard the boat. Finally back onboard, the surface oxygen wasn’t helping. I had had similar pains once before and found that Ibuprofen helped far more than oxygen, and this proved to be the case again as the pain subsided less than 20 minutes later.

During the boat ride home, the whole story of what happened became much cleared. When we had untangled the anchor, it hadn’t bitten into the sand properly and almost instantly started to drag across the sand, moving further and further from the wreck.


As subsequent teams descended, all were able to follow the anchors trail to the wreck, but by the time it came to surface, the boat was too far away for us to swim to the anchor (over half a mile). Since there are relatively few visual reference points on this area of the ocean, and the boat crew was also preparing food, it took some time for them to realize they were no longer anchored on the site. The main reason the boat crew was alerted (except being hailed by the fishing boat) is that we always try to give the captain an accurate runtime of our dive. In this case, we had exceeded our 55 minute planned time, and since we are virtually always on time, the captain was alerted.



LESSONS LEARNED

The lessons learned from this are many:

1) If you are moving the anchor to free it from obstructions it, make sure it bites into to sand.

2) Since we had planned to return up the anchor line, it may have made more sense to move it at the end of the dive, not the beginning. The downside here is that had we failed to return, a subsequent dive to free the anchor may have been needed.

3) Some teams saw the anchor was skipping and decided to continue their dive. It would have been better for them to ascend up the skipping anchor and alert the boat.

4) Our 3-foot (1M) safety sausages are only really useful with little or no swell. 6-foot sausages would have been better here (but would still not have been visible to our dive boat).

5) The boat didn’t notice they were drifting. A portable GPS, or an alarm on the boat GPS would have helped here

6) Sometimes it’s better to cut decompression (or safety stop) short or omit it altogether and surface earlier. Had we not done so, who knows how far we would have drifted, and if we would have been within range of a fishing boat to come to our rescue.

7) Check your safety sausage for leaks regularly and fix them (I think the reason one team’s sausage didn’t inflate correctly).

8) Giving accurate maximum runtimes to the boat captain is a valuable logistical and safety tool.
We learned a lot from this experience, and hopefully you can too. Dive safe.
 
This is a little out of my realm but suggestions 2 and 3 stand out.

If a dive boat is to be considered some level of surface support as opposed being just a ride (and lunch stand) having someone stay on lookout would seem appropriate. Who's job is it to ultimately keep the boat on location?
 
Who's job is it to ultimately keep the boat on location?

The captain.

PS - if the divers had reels with them they could have ascended directly from the wreck on a line... and stayed put while waiting for the boat to come back to get them. This situation would have been no more than a nuisance if they had reels with them.

PPS - and a "tech" diver doing deco with the potential of a free ascent carrying a 3ft "safety sausage"? That's the equivalent of carrying a SpareAir for your deco gas.
 
I think that, if you don't boat, you don't know enough to think about what you are doing when you move an anchor. There's a thread here from way back about me and a team moving the anchor (again, just as requested of these folks) and thereby forcing another team to do a free ascent, because they couldn't find it.

If this is the boat I think it was, they should be pretty worried about losing divers. I agree that an alarm on the GPS of some kind ought to be de rigeur for boats anchoring to drop divers on sites with no surface structure. Failing that, there ought to be a protocol for checking the GPS at regular intervals during the dive time.

Run times ARE fantastic . . . having boat tended for technical divers, I know there is nothing more reassuring than seeing that bag pop just when you expect it to do so.

And finally, nobody should take sucking on everybody's O2 bottle, followed by some ibuprofen, as an appropriate approach to a Type I DCS event. The oxygen was appropriate. The ibuprofen probably didn't hurt anything, but taking pain medication to mask a DCS hit is NOT adequate or advisable treatment. It is quite possible for the symptoms to worsen when the med wears off (or just as time goes by). In addition, failing to treat an event like this MIGHT be a setup for development of osteonecrosis in the affected joint.
 
When diving offshore, the Captain should lay out plenty of scope if anchoring. Wind and waves come up every afternoon in the San Pedro Channel. Since the author mentioned the Catalina Express bearing down on them, they were probably diving the UB88 at 180-190'. A reel could have been looped around the conning tower at 165' to allow all divers to ascend above the wreck.
I've never heard of DCS appearing so soon. Perhaps the author merely had elbow pain from carrying deco bottles around on a choppy surface.
I've dived the UB88 a few times and never when the surface was not calm. I've had too many dives when the anchored dragged to attempt a decompression dive in those conditions.
If you are diving from a boat where the Captain and crew remain topside, it would have been better to drop a weighted line and live boat the dive. The boat could then remain in the area to "protect" the divers from other boat traffic.
 
Retards... in the water and on the boat.. What can you say?

Telling divers to unhook the anchor at the start of their dive?
Actually following the boat operator's direction of unhooking the boat from the wreck and expecting it to stay there?
Swim down an anchor line to sand and then follow a furrow to the wreck and do a deco dive?
Shorten up a deco stop to do what? Look around? (Much better to stay down).
Hit the surface with skipped deco, experience pain .. and not descend with oxygen and tell your buddy to hold onto your float?
Going inside the boat and making lunch and not, at a minimum setting an anchor alarm on the GPS?
 
From California Diver Magazine. I'm assuming the name of the boat was "The Charlie Foxtrot" based on this story...



LESSONS LEARNED

The lessons learned from this are many:

1) If you are moving the anchor to free it from obstructions it, make sure it bites into to sand.

2) Since we had planned to return up the anchor line, it may have made more sense to move it at the end of the dive, not the beginning. The downside here is that had we failed to return, a subsequent dive to free the anchor may have been needed.

3) Some teams saw the anchor was skipping and decided to continue their dive. It would have been better for them to ascend up the skipping anchor and alert the boat.

4) Our 3-foot (1M) safety sausages are only really useful with little or no swell. 6-foot sausages would have been better here (but would still not have been visible to our dive boat).

5) The boat didn’t notice they were drifting. A portable GPS, or an alarm on the boat GPS would have helped here

6) Sometimes it’s better to cut decompression (or safety stop) short or omit it altogether and surface earlier. Had we not done so, who knows how far we would have drifted, and if we would have been within range of a fishing boat to come to our rescue.

7) Check your safety sausage for leaks regularly and fix them (I think the reason one team’s sausage didn’t inflate correctly).

8) Giving accurate maximum runtimes to the boat captain is a valuable logistical and safety tool.
We learned a lot from this experience, and hopefully you can too. Dive safe.



I don't agree with #6, cutting decompression or safety stops is just trading one problem for another. At the time the decision was made to cut the decompression short they didn't even know for sure what was happening on the surface. So they traded a known problem (decompression) for a potential problem. The boat could have have easily been right there.
 
People have already pointed out a number of errors. One that sticks out to me is the failure of anyone to have with them an appropriate size surface marker with enough line on it to deploy it as soon as you area ready to leave the wreck. What they had was ridiculously inadequate.
 
People have already pointed out a number of errors. One that sticks out to me is the failure of anyone to have with them an appropriate size surface marker with enough line on it to deploy it as soon as you area ready to leave the wreck. What they had was ridiculously inadequate.

Yes, I would think that DECO divers would always have contingency plans for not being able to ascend up the anchor line. There are many reasons why that might occur, so you would just have to plan on it. This would require a reel or spool that can be deployed from the bottom and with a large, adequate sMB, it should be fully inflated when it makes it up from the deep. The the diver just needs to stay heavy, reel them selves up the floatline (holding it vertical at the surface).

Once the SMB is deployed there is no rush to get to the surface. An adequate float being pulled down hard from below will stand up better and be more visible to the captain, then a few diver's heads on the surface. Plus, when it gets windy, you can NOT hold a big smb up at the surface. It just gets pushed over by the wind. Easier and safer to stay at 15-20 ft, get as heavy as is possible and hang from the float and pray you hear the boat engines rev up when they circle around you.

Lastly, I carry a vhf radio in my BC. I would call the capt on the radio, that is if they are even in the wheel house and not making microwave popcorn in the galley..
 
I'm looking at this from the standpoint of someone who is decidedly non-techie:

1. It underscores everything I say about tech: Because the margins-of-error grow thinner & thinner as you push the envelope (deeeper, longer, etc.), tech diving requires MORE skill and awareness, not less, than traditional recreational diving. These guys are lucky no one died or became Drifting Dan Revisited.

2. I am appalled that apprently the captain was never notified about the alleged DCS symptoms because it sounds like the author (not RJP - he's just relaying the story) never bothered to get hyperbaric treatment.

3. This sounds to me like the tech version of whatI call a la-de-dah dive. Divers dive with nary a thought in theri head humming "la-de-dah" to themsevles because there's an assumption that everything will be fine and go according to plan so there's an ignorance that seemingly innocuous things (freeing the anchor line) will have devastating consequences. Do you dives anticipating potential problems, nbot assuming you've got it all dialed in.

4. Again, I'm not techie but how are these guys not diving without jon-line type reels? Isn't that SOP?

5. Regarding the anchor situation, free it at the END of the dive, not the beginning. And if you can't do that without increasing the danger to yourself (recall the circumstances of the Darren Douglas double fatality from the mid-90s), then you simply complete your ascent protocols, tell the captain the anchor is hopelessly jammed, and he's going to have to cut his line. An anchor is a better thing to lose than a life.

6. Not to sound like a shill for them, but it underscores the importance, especially when diving in these kinds of circumstances, of carrying a Nautilus Lifeline with you. With it, you can alert your boat, other nearby boats, and even the US Coast Guard to your predicament.

- Ken
 

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