A sticky wicket...

[JeffG]

It's really sad I know what that is off the top of my head. :shakehead

Well...I did have to look up the spelling.

 

[limeyx]

Well...I did have to look up the spelling.

dubm candians cant speel

 

[PerroneFord]

You see before you 100 tunnels, all alike. Your line has been cut by a vicious pirhana fish, and you have no idea where the exit is.

All three primary lights have gone out. Your last backup light starts to flicker.
You realize your SPG has not been working for the last 30 mins, and your SAC rate really *hasn't* improved by 300% -- you've been burning your last 1/3 of gas for the last 25 mins.

You hear the sounds of the cave collapsing in the far far distance.

COMMAND> "Exit Cave"

You turn around. You see before you 100 tunnels all alike.

COMMAND> "Exit other way"

You see before you 100 tunnels all alike.

Your last backup light goes out. You feel your primary regulator being pulled from your mouth.

What do you do ?

Is one of my buddies female?

 

[limeyx]

Is one of my buddies female?

ha, the real question is would it really matter

 

[PerroneFord]

If I am gonna "Do it Right", yea it matters!

 

[TSandM]

You know, minus the overhead, I've been in this position a number of times. Three man team, one turns and goes the other way, the other is continuing forward and not responding to signals. I actually got confronted with this in Fundies a number of times, and failed to find a good solution to it then, and I don't have one now.

You can reasonably assume the guy who turned to exit is not happy with something. The guy continuing is okay, but shouldn't be alone. The guy continuing SHOULD be paying attention to signals from behind him, but he isn't, and that happens sometimes, even with trained people. If you're close enough, you can swim forward and grab a fin and get his attention and get turned around to chase #3. If you've got too much separation, that's yet another place where the organization of the dive has failed.

This is one of the reasons we train and train, not just to achieve skills, but to achieve awareness, and to learn effective communication. Otherwise you end up with situations like this, where there is no good answer.

 

[limeyx]

You know, minus the overhead, I've been in this position a number of times. Three man team, one turns and goes the other way, the other is continuing forward and not responding to signals. I actually got confronted with this in Fundies a number of times, and failed to find a good solution to it then, and I don't have one now.
....

We had the same thing in DIR-F also. One team of three had a member want to "join" our team. The leader of the other team left his team-mate (who was admittedly I think doing a basic 5 with the instructor) to collect the drifting away member.



Instructor was extremely adamant that you never "leave someone on the bottom" to go off help/find someone else (then all 3 can become separated).

As painful as it might be, in this situation, I would always do my best to collect the person who is continuing the dive (either into the cave or in open water) before trying to rescue someone else who may be panicked (especially if that person is already heading for the exit). No one wants to force #1 in a cave to have to execute lost buddy drills un-necessarily.

EDIT: This is obviously assuming the person running off has gas. If they didn't, I'd have no choice but to go after them. That's a scary scenario.

 

[jeckyll]

Never say never.

People do weird things under pressure. DIR or not.

I understand where Perrone is coming from. It isn't DIR, but its a scenario that could easily be played out during a dive. (Having been in a couple.)

Jeff I didn't mean that my buddies would never do that. I mean that once someone had acted like that they would no longer be one of my regular dive buddies, as from the sounds of it there wasn't much pressure

I would expect that if someone has an issue they signal me and we fix it. That fix might be to turn the dive . And if someone thumbed the dive it's over. That's all I'm saying.

Do you think that's too simplistic an approach? (that's an honest question, not rhetorical )

Bjorn

 

[MonkSeal]

What do you do ?

1) Spear both buddies to death with your knife, steal their doubles and lights and high-tail it out
2) accept your fate and go quietly
3) donate your doubles to your "more in need team-mates"
4) Get out your shovels and attempt to dig through the ceiling in one last attempt at survival

COMMAND> "Wake up."

 

[PerroneFord]

In cave class, we were a team of three. There was me, having done fundies but having less diving experience than either of the other divers. There was the younger girl who had more overhead dive experience than anyone else, and there was a third diver, who had more experience than me, but I don't think had been introduced to team concepts.

It was a constant struggle to keep the group together, as the younger girl was a very fast swimmer, the other female was a very slow swimmer, and for reasons unknown, I was often in the middle. The hardest scenario was when I was in the middle, fast swimmer was in the lead on exit, and slowest swimmer was last out. I was trying to signal the lead to slow down, and the person behind me wasn't keeping up with my casual pace. Since we'd turned on thirds, it wasn't the time to piddle around and enjoy the scenery. It was time to go home!

In several instances as the gaps widened, the instructors hit us with OOAs forcing us to close the gap to help each other. It was some of the hardest stuff I've ever done. And trying to play middleman between two divergent ends is no joke. In open water it's unpleasant. In a cave, it can be deadly.