Failed CESA in OW

[BoltSnap]

Yeah, probably, but Italy is not Libya. I wouldn’t be surprised if a good number of my o-ring stash came from Italy.

This is funny, the book screws I was talking about came from Italy. Not only they cost so much, half of them were lost during shipping, somehow they fell out of the box during shipping. I placed a new order for them and it should be another month for them to come here except that I was told by the Italian supplier that courier workers in Italy are on strike now so they don't know when they will ship. I am waiting on the shipping company to get back to me concerning credit for shipping and possibly paying for the cost of these items since they were lost in transit with the shipping company. Just another day in sunny Libya

I have o'rings for tanks in stock and I always order more with orders I place for other things just in case. Shipping o'rings is far more costly than the o'rings themselves. DIN valves and first stages do cost less than Yokes because of lack of o'ring issues.

 

[Angelo Farina]

This is funny, the book screws I was talking about came from Italy. Not only they cost so much, half of them were lost during shipping, somehow they fell out of the box during shipping. I placed a new order for them and it should be another month for them to come here except that I was told by the Italian supplier that courier workers in Italy are on strike now so they don't know when they will ship. I am waiting on the shipping company to get back to me concerning credit for shipping and possibly paying for the cost of these items since they were lost in transit with the shipping company. Just another day in sunny Libya

I have o'rings for tanks in stock and I always order more with orders I place for other things just in case. Shipping o'rings is far more costly than the o'rings themselves. DIN valves and first stages do cost less than Yokes because of lack of o'ring issues.

In the eighties shipping from Italy to Maldives was truly a problem.

 

[Umpman]

OK, First post, so dont jump on me...(Have looked on other posts & cant find...)

I did my first two OW dives at the weekend... was really struggling with maintaining Neutral buoyancy (Drysuit worn) and had extra weight added, both in BCD & Harness...
I wasn't tested for buoyancy at the surface...so once air was released from BCD i went down like a stone, deep breath not enough to keep me at eye level at surface...
So, struggling for the day, we went into day 2 & dive 3...
We started the CESA & i was a bit confused by the instructions at 5 or 6m platform, as they seemed to contradict what was said at the surface... Instructor seemed to offer me the buoy rope, so i took it.. FAILED...
try again...
got to surface fine, but could not inflate BCD orally, as weight kept dragging me under...FAILED
try again...
Same.. kicking like mad.... still sinking, reg back in...FAILED
try again...
Not sure what happened here.. Instructor pulled my reg out which completely threw me, grabbed reg & purged to get back in.. FAILED
try again...
same.. weight stopping me from being able to take a breath at surface...
at this point instructor took of hood & I realised that it was all over...wasnt allowed to do dive 4.
I'm absolutely devastated! Quite frankly, at the moment I never want to put a BCD on again....
Wide open question...by my description.. was I missing something, was i doing something wrong...? It wasn't really explained, just told that I wasn't getting it.... whatever happened to the "we'll do it all in your own time" mantra.. "no rush" etc....

Gutted !!

Sounds like a bad instructor to begin with. The instructor should have helped you determine the correct amount of weight and maybe be slightly negative so you can descend easier. Unfortunately, many instructors purposely overweight their students to keep them on the bottom because its easier to control the student, especially in a group setting. In a true Out of Air situation, you would drop could ditch weights at the surface to establish buoyancy and also orally inflate BCD.

I dont understand how they said you weren’t getting it. It sounds like you were doing the correct technique but the weight was making it difficult. A good instructor would keep working with you until you get it.

 

[Seaweed Doc]

Definitely it was a very anomomalus case.
But it did provide me a lot of experience about O-ring extrusions!

Might not be so anomalous today. I had my first experience with a serious o-ring extrusion while teaching in the pool.

It presented initially as a leak when a leak at the yoke o-ring developed and the o-ring protruded a bit. I didn't think much of it, and replaced the o-ring and did the first pool dive of the day with that tank. Then when I went to fill it, it blew out again while connected to the whip. At that point I pulled the tank and left it for the techs to figure out what was going wrong.

The techs told me some prior instructor or student had dinged the valve somehow, slightly altering the shape of the o-ring seating. That was a first for me. In honesty, I wasn't looking for a mis-shapen valve opening, but did look for gouges, etc., that might nick the o-ring. Didn't see anything.

Thankfully, it never happened with a student using the tank under water. (That particular tank was being used by my DMC, who would have handled it just fine had she had an emergency.)

 

[gorgonzola]

I'll second the instructor error bit. No excuse for not checking buoyancy in the pool and then again on the surface before your first OW dive - that's a direct safety issue, as you experienced being unable to stay above water to orally inflate. Can also cause serious ear damage if you can't equalize and drop 30'. And then they didn't adjust your weights after you dropped and couldn't stay on the surface?! Failing to give a proper dive briefing and failing to help you when confused and/or let you watch someone else go first is just icing on the fail-cake. Leave a bad review, send a complaint to whatever agency they train with (might save someone else having a similar experience), and vet your next dive shop carefully for a hopefully-better experience.

Your instructor shouldn't rush you, pressure you, or start a dive without making sure you understand it first - both a normal dive briefing and taking a min to answer questions. You should never be unclear on the process or the dive objectives, and if you're just not feeling confident you should be able to ask them to have someone else go first while you watch. That was super helpful when I was new and still confused by all the equipment jargon. Blah blah blah inflator hose was just word salad, but watching someone hold the hose up and release air or orally inflate was immediately obvious and I had no trouble following along.

Likewise, my gf took a long time to get her OW. She's got allergies and generally uncooperative sinuses, the rental gear didn't fit well, etc etc etc. Her instructors were very patient the entire way through - she got 1:1 dives with the instructor to check every step of the process and work through everything, free extra pool time, the ability to jump into a followup class the next week to redo dives, etc. Was a long battle but she got it done - full props to my shop for sticking with her. They didn't even charge extra (although of course we tipped generously).

Scuba seems to attract some eccentric personalities - haven't met a dive shop owner yet that wasn't a bit of a character. That's fine and hopefully part of the fun... but when you walk into a new shop and chat with the staff, pay attention to how relaxed and patient they are and how well they explain things. Do you feel like they're taking time to work with people as individuals, or are they trying to rush things along? Would you feel comfortable with them in the water? Find a dive shop that's friendly and patient, and don't be afraid to walk out if you get a bad vibe. Can always make up an excuse if it makes you feel better. Read reviews too, they're certainly flawed but can give you some insight into a shop's personality.

As everyone above said, diving is absolutely worth it. It's a bumpy road... just part of the ride. It can help to do some homework on your own time, learn the gear and the training levels and a bit of the culture. The better you understand what you're getting into, the better you can choose the right path.

 

[DonFlorida]

Sounds like an instructor problem. Not a student problem.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

When the student 'sinks like a stone' and 'kicking like mad and still sinking', it's a major issue. A major safety issue.
Any half decent instructor can tell you this. This is how people end up panicking and drowning.

Exactly!!
This is my biggest and most vocal gripe in modern scuba instruction and diving, OVERWEIGHTING!
IMO consistently overweighting students to the point like what the OP experienced is probably one of the biggest things killing the interest of new divers getting into the hobby. The OP himself quotes as saying he’s almost to the point of just saying F**k it!
It has also been responsible for killing divers even after surfacing with issues only to sink away again to their deaths.
I was also overweighted when I took OW, but it was weightbelts with wetsuits in the ocean. At least 10 lbs too much. Caused struggling at the surface and the weightbelt roll-on exercise was a clown show with that much weight.
And divers who carry on this nonsense into the new fad of non ditchable weight is complete madness!

 

[boulderjohn]

This is my biggest and most vocal gripe in modern scuba instruction and diving, OVERWEIGHTING!

I fully agree.

I believe it starts with training in the pool--students and instructors doing skills on the knees must be significantly overweighted in order to do the skills comfortably.

When I posed for pictures on the PADI article on teaching skills while neutrally buoyant a dozen years ago, I had not done any work on the knees in years. I was wearing a 3mm shorty, which was all that was needed in our well-heated instructional pool. I had learned that I was perfectly weighted with no weight whatsoever, but I always wore 6 pounds while instructing so I could descend quickly in case of emergency. That is what I wore when I posed for the pictures showing neutrally buoyant/horizontal trim pictures. Then I tried to do the same skills on the knees, and I couldn't do them without bobbing around. I had to wear 12 pounds to do those pictures.

In contrast, the closer the student is to correct weighting, the easier the skills are to do if they are being taught while neutrally buoyant.

 

[berndo]

And divers who carry on this nonsense into the new fad of non ditchable weight is complete madness!

Yeah, that's why I don't like that new divers being told online to get steel BPs and wings. Those are the people who end up with way too much non ditchable weight.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I fully agree.

I believe it starts with training in the pool--students and instructors doing skills on the knees must be significantly overweighted in order to do the skills comfortably.

When I posed for pictures on the PADI article on teaching skills while neutrally buoyant a dozen years ago, I had not done any work on the knees in years. I was wearing a 3mm shorty, which was all that was needed in our well-heated instructional pool. I had learned that I was perfectly weighted with no weight whatsoever, but I always wore 6 pounds while instructing so I could descend quickly in case of emergency. That is what I wore when I posed for the pictures showing neutrally buoyant/horizontal trim pictures. Then I tried to do the same skills on the knees, and I couldn't do them without bobbing around. I had to wear 12 pounds to do those pictures.

In contrast, the closer the student is to correct weighting, the easier the skills are to do if they are being taught while neutrally buoyant.

When I got certified we didn’t have integrated weight BC’s. They were a basic Seaquest jacket model and we used weightbelts. The problem was that a huge weightbelt pulling you down and a jacket BC pulling you up with an aluminum tank on top of it resulted in trying to go around at a 45 degree angle completely out of trim and also out of breath lugging all that crap around, the BC overinflated just to stay off the bottom and a massive weightbelt. Not only that but the BC ended up under tour armpits and it was truly distressing.
I remember the big skill in the pool was the fin pivot, and the instructor also showed us the standard go to pinnacle of his neutral bouyancy achievement of hovering upright in a lotus position in mid pool. I realize now that both of those things are utterly useless in any form of modern scuba diving, IMO.
I was a freediver before I decided to become
Scuba certified. Freedive weighting is entirely different from modern scuba overweighting. You don’t have any floatation other than your suit and your lungs, so you must weight accordingly or you might have a one way ride down and fight to glide around like you should. Not fun a breathhold!

So when they overweighted us in OW I just thought maybe that was just the way it was in scuba, I didn’t know, scuba was new to me. After all, they were the “experts”.
It was not until some time later that I realized I didn’t need that much weight through mentors and others I learned from. I began removing small amounts of weight each dive until I reached what I found out to be proper weighting and it was at least 10 lbs. if not more.
I’ve said in the past, and I know it’s extreme and I don’t expect anybody to try it, but if you want to teach someone about proper weighting via a crash course, just take their BC away from them. It’s old school and they will be forced to learn proper weighting or else they will be crawling around on the bottom.