caruso
Banned
Yesterday afternoon my sister and I dived the Rebel wreck in Fort Lauderdale. The wreck is 128' long in about 110' to the sand. It's largely broken up but the bow and stern still have large open areas that can be penetrated. Because of her schedule my sister could not join me this past week of diving in South Florida but due to a last minute change she was able to join me for 4 dives on Sunday.
American Dream Charters has no "store", their shop is basically the back of a box truck approximately 20' long that sits on the parking lot next to the boat. Which is rather convenient by the way, as long as you don't need to purchase any dive gear. All their rental equipment is inside the big box including a compressor and dozens of tanks, and the boat is right there, they check you in at the boat and you can park nearby.
Probably because of their rather limited facilities, they don't have Nitrox available. Knowing this in advance, I had rented 2 steel 100 tanks from Gold Coast Scuba, with EAN 35 for this dive. I use a P02 setting of 1.6 for all dives but I'm getting off topic. Point being, since my sister joined me last minute, she was unable to get Nitrox so she was diving an AL80 on air. She's got an extremely low SAC rate, always surfacing with more than a half a tank while the rest of us are at our reserve. My sister is an intelligent woman but when it comes to diving, although she's smooth in the water and has over 700 dives, it's scary what she doesn't know about decompression.
We're about a half hour into this deep wreck dive and I've still got about 10 minutes left. I signal to her "is it ok" if I go and check out this forward hold one more time, she glances at her gauges, shrugs an "ok" so in I go, she follows and here I am pointing out 4 huge lionfish when she suddenly bolts for the line and starts ascending like she was about to miss a train.
I catch up to her on the line at 15' and she's totally freaked out- very unlike her. Gesturing, eyes wide, looking all around and pointing to her computer which says DECO, with an up arrow and "10''" and "1 minute". She's stopped at about 15' and has no clue. I calm her down with reassuring signals and gesture she follow me up to 10' but of course that's the last thing she wants to do. Luckily she trusts me when it comes to all things diving and gear related (although possibly not so much after this dive). We get to 10' and the DECO obligation is gone almost immediately.
We did a nice long 5 minute (or longer) safety stop until those dots got to the bottom of the yellow and the whites of her eyes looked normal again, and slowly ascended to the surface, with no issues.
Interestingly- and I messaged @scubadada about this- her Veo200 did not provide safety stop information. Once the DECO obligation was satisfied it simply reverted back to normal dive mode.
A few take-aways:
1- Know your dive computer! Especially what the alternate "DECO" screens mean. She had NO clue.
2- Watch your bottom time- She said "I just watch the dots go up the side and suddenly it went from yellow to DECO!" [nitrogen bar loading graph]. She didn't even monitor the "dive time remaining" numbers!
3- I suppose I bear some responsibility for going back into that hold, knowing I was on EAN35 and she was on air- but again- she's supposed to know her computer and after 700 dives you'd think she'd know if there was sufficient dive time remaining.
4- If she had panicked and surfaced rapidly things could have gone from "mildly bad" to much worse.
She's fine by the way and now she gets to tell everyone who wants to listen that she "went into DECO!".
And yes we sat down with the computer manual and went through all the different DECO screens and I showed her how you need to watch those big "DIVE TIME REMAINING" numbers right there on the face of the computer.
American Dream Charters has no "store", their shop is basically the back of a box truck approximately 20' long that sits on the parking lot next to the boat. Which is rather convenient by the way, as long as you don't need to purchase any dive gear. All their rental equipment is inside the big box including a compressor and dozens of tanks, and the boat is right there, they check you in at the boat and you can park nearby.
Probably because of their rather limited facilities, they don't have Nitrox available. Knowing this in advance, I had rented 2 steel 100 tanks from Gold Coast Scuba, with EAN 35 for this dive. I use a P02 setting of 1.6 for all dives but I'm getting off topic. Point being, since my sister joined me last minute, she was unable to get Nitrox so she was diving an AL80 on air. She's got an extremely low SAC rate, always surfacing with more than a half a tank while the rest of us are at our reserve. My sister is an intelligent woman but when it comes to diving, although she's smooth in the water and has over 700 dives, it's scary what she doesn't know about decompression.
We're about a half hour into this deep wreck dive and I've still got about 10 minutes left. I signal to her "is it ok" if I go and check out this forward hold one more time, she glances at her gauges, shrugs an "ok" so in I go, she follows and here I am pointing out 4 huge lionfish when she suddenly bolts for the line and starts ascending like she was about to miss a train.
I catch up to her on the line at 15' and she's totally freaked out- very unlike her. Gesturing, eyes wide, looking all around and pointing to her computer which says DECO, with an up arrow and "10''" and "1 minute". She's stopped at about 15' and has no clue. I calm her down with reassuring signals and gesture she follow me up to 10' but of course that's the last thing she wants to do. Luckily she trusts me when it comes to all things diving and gear related (although possibly not so much after this dive). We get to 10' and the DECO obligation is gone almost immediately.
We did a nice long 5 minute (or longer) safety stop until those dots got to the bottom of the yellow and the whites of her eyes looked normal again, and slowly ascended to the surface, with no issues.
Interestingly- and I messaged @scubadada about this- her Veo200 did not provide safety stop information. Once the DECO obligation was satisfied it simply reverted back to normal dive mode.
A few take-aways:
1- Know your dive computer! Especially what the alternate "DECO" screens mean. She had NO clue.
2- Watch your bottom time- She said "I just watch the dots go up the side and suddenly it went from yellow to DECO!" [nitrogen bar loading graph]. She didn't even monitor the "dive time remaining" numbers!
3- I suppose I bear some responsibility for going back into that hold, knowing I was on EAN35 and she was on air- but again- she's supposed to know her computer and after 700 dives you'd think she'd know if there was sufficient dive time remaining.
4- If she had panicked and surfaced rapidly things could have gone from "mildly bad" to much worse.
She's fine by the way and now she gets to tell everyone who wants to listen that she "went into DECO!".
And yes we sat down with the computer manual and went through all the different DECO screens and I showed her how you need to watch those big "DIVE TIME REMAINING" numbers right there on the face of the computer.
