Wreck Diver Certification (Blindfolded reel-in)

[NauticalNick]

Another trick if you're using a spool is to hold the exit side hand still and wind the spool toward it across your body. That minimizes the accelerate-coast cycle that happens when winding with the exit hand (spool fairly stationary).

That's exactly what i ended up doing as reeling it tightly while remaining buoyant proved to be impossible. I wasn't sure if the expectation was for me to perfectly reel myself as I glided through the water as inevitably my momentum would pull me forward faster than I could reel and then the line became slack again.

 

[SmashMonkey]

Hi all,

Not sure if looking for advice or just encouragement but for one of my wreck certification dives I had to do the blindfolded reel-in (simulating coming out of a silted-out wreck with your reel fully wound back up) and while I barely got it done, it was an absolute disaster. The test was in shallow open water with a non-linear line path (bit of zig-zagging back and forth) and I got it done just before I ran out of gas. It was by far the hardest thing I have had to do in scuba so far, my buoyancy was all over the place (it's normally okay) and I guess just looking for tips to get better at this as keeping the line tight in particular was very hard to do.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Is this for recreational basic wreck course or technical advanced wreck course? When I went through advanced wreck the #1 rule was the team to exit the wreck and get back to the surface alive. You made it out alive so good job! In complete darkness, 4 x light failure (both divers' lights and backups fail), silt out blind exit we would quickly terminate the reel; and leave it behind; and the team would contact the guideline; and bump and go blind exit. Last thing we want is make one emergency into two emergencies by getting entangled in the line; or lost buddy; or SAC rate increases and either diver OOA. The other thing is, if it truly is a total darkness emergency exit, we never pull out the line. If unbeknownst to the reel diver, a team member somehow gets separated during the blind exit, now they are lost inside the wreck with no lights and no line. A $200 reel is not worth dying for.

TBH perfect buoyancy, trim and propulsion is always the correct answer in overhead.

 

[tursiops]

What agency/certification was this for? On which dive?

 

[boulderjohn]

I think some people are misunderstanding the original post.

• He was practicing the skill in open water, not on a dive in a wreck.
• He was asking for tips on handling the reel better.
• He was not asking about what to do if he was running out of gas while using the reel in a wreck.

 

[NauticalNick]

What agency/certification was this for? On which dive?

PADI recreational wreck diver. Dive 2. It was lay line, reel it back in and then lay line and reel it back in blindfolded.

 

[NauticalNick]

Is this for recreational basic wreck course or technical advanced wreck course? When I went through advanced wreck the #1 rule was the team to exit the wreck and get back to the surface alive. You made it out alive so good job! In complete darkness, 4 x light failure (both divers' lights and backups fail), silt out blind exit we would quickly terminate the reel; and leave it behind; and the team would contact the guideline; and bump and go blind exit. Last thing we want is make one emergency into two emergencies by getting entangled in the line; or lost buddy; or SAC rate increases and either diver OOA. The other thing is, if it truly is a total darkness emergency exit, we never pull out the line. If unbeknownst to the reel diver, a team member somehow gets separated during the blind exit, now they are lost inside the wreck with no lights and no line. A $200 reel is not worth dying for.

TBH perfect buoyancy, trim and propulsion is always the correct answer in overhead.

It was a PADI recreational wreck course.

 

[NauticalNick]

I think some people are misunderstanding the original post.

• He was practicing the skill in open water, not on a dive in a wreck.
• He was asking for tips on handling the reel better.
• He was not asking about what to do if he was running out of gas while using the reel in a wreck.

It was on a wreck dive, just not with penetration. Think an old wreck that had broken up with the line tied off at various points across the broken up wreck. You're correct as well in that the OOA was a near result but not the point of the test. It just took me a long time and my breathing rate was high as I struggled through it.

 

[boulderjohn]

I'm not fussed about the stress test as I appreciate it's useful it's more a matter of I wasn't sure what the expected standard was and I came out thinking I did very poorly

Unless things have changed since I retired, working with a reel is part of dive #3, and there is nothing in the standard about being blindfolded. Under PADI rules, the instructor cannot require you to do the blindfold skill successfully in order to complete the course, since it is not part of the standards.

 

[lizardland]

Doing something once means nothing. Training is there to allow you to fail safely and you failed safely. Do it again until you get it.

Line laying is a skill and not an easy one. It's something you need to practice so it's hard to take anything meaningful from doing it wrong once. Things I'd concentrate on:

- route choice. Zigzagging all over the place isn't a good idea. Every tie off is time on the way out so try and maintain the straightest route that avoids line traps. If you want to go and look at something off the main route then line out and reel back to where you branched off when done rather than leaving line all over the place. If it took significantly longer to exit than it did to go in then your route choice was poor.

- placing a line is faster than wrapping it for when it comes to reversing on the way out. But remember a moving line is a line getting abraded so sometimes wrapping makes sense.

- reeling in works better as a two man job. One reels in, the guy in front maintains tension and undoes the wraps.

- if you churned through all your gas on the exit drill then you really need to understand why. That means you used twice as much on the way out as you did on the way in. That is seriously not good and you need to figure it out. Reptition is the best way to understand where it is going wrong.

- I would absolutely not be winding the reel back in if I was silted out and found myself alone. If you cannot confirm that everyone who came in with you is on the line in front of you then leave the line in place. Different situation if you were diving solo, then it comes down to how much you care about losing a reel. But if you were diving with others and you are winding the line back in without knowing 100% they are in front of you then that's a death sentence. And if they are in front of you and they aren't helping with the winding back in then you need to have a word with them.

Screwing something up the first time doesn't matter. What's important is how it goes the 10th or 20th time.

 

[Wibble]

TBH perfect buoyancy, trim and propulsion is always the correct answer in overhead.

That and a rebreather providing ‘unlimited’ gas to keep the lizard brain at bay.