Big plan, many failure points

[newmanl]

Hi Fabio,

First, thanks very much for sharing your story. Brave folks like you, sharing what didn't work as planned, is one of the very few ways we get to learn from experiences in the real world.

My first point - I hope you and your buddies had a good debrief after this dive. It sounds like everyone can take a few lessons from what didn't work out so well.

My second point is largely based on the use of the scooter. Me and a couple of my regular buddies have also learned the hard way that scootering in poor visibility is a good way to get separated - especially without having talked about control measures and procedures for poor visibility situations before the dive. Here's what we do - as has been mentioned already, we scooter side-by-side making sure to always be able to see the other diver's light, or nose of their scooter. In very poor visibility, we switch to touch contact, meaning one of us will clip up our scooter and the other tows us back to the exit point while we're finishing deco (our bad visibility here is usually restricted to the top 13-10m).

As a result of getting separated, we now regularly practice scooter towing (in case of poor visibility or a scooter failure), touch-contact gas switches in shallow water as the oxygen stop is often done in very poor visibility - particularly in spring and summer, and scooter compass navigation - although we are mostly diving walls, so it's easier than open water.

I think, as I'm sure you know, the plan may have been a bit ambitious based on your scooter experience, but its amazing how much can be learned from a critical look at a buddy separation event. Personally, I think you did a great job of getting control of yourself and the situation, and prioritizing what you needed to do. Kudos.

Cheers,
Lee

 

[fsardone]

Hi Fabio,

First, thanks very much for sharing your story. Brave folks like you, sharing what didn't work as planned, is one of the very few ways we get to learn from experiences in the real world.

My first point - I hope you and your buddies had a good debrief after this dive. It sounds like everyone can take a few lessons from what didn't work out so well.

My second point is largely based on the use of the scooter. Me and a couple of my regular buddies have also learned the hard way that scootering in poor is a good way to get separated - especially without having talked about control measures and procedures for poor visibility situations before the dive. Here's what we do - as has been mentioned already, we scooter side-by-side making sure to always be able to see the other diver's light, or nose of their scooter. In very poor visibility, we switch to touch contact, meaning one of us will clip up our scooter and other tows us back to the exit point while we're finishing deco (our bad visibility here is usually restricted to the top 13-10m).

As a result of getting separated, we now regularly practice scooter towing (in case of poor visibility or a scooter failure), touch-contact gas switches in shallow water as the oxygen stop is often done in very poor visibility - particularly in spring and summer, and scooter compass navigation - although we are mostly diving walls, so it's easier than open water.

I think, as I'm sure you know, the plan may have been a bit ambitious based on your scooter experience, but its amazing how much can be learned from critically looking at a buddy separation event. Personally, I think you did a great job of getting control of yourself and the situation, and prioritizing what you needed to do. Kudos.

Cheers,
Lee

Newmany thanks for you comment.
I was hoping to tap to others' experience and what you said is very much what I was looking for.
Even after a few hundred (or a thousand and spare) dives you are bound to mess up if you prod your confort zone (no shame in making mistakes not learning from them is the issue).
Me and my buddy just had a dinner having a chat about what happen (the cook is his fiancee and was playing diver 3 the other day, so was kind of a team debrief looking at the video and pictures taken and talking about what happened).

Yes a compass and probably a depth gauge will be installed on the scooter. And scooter following well not a great idea easy to loose contect with a buddy and unless in a cave very difficult to reestablish contact once lost.

Sharing is a part of a just culture which is engrained in flyers, hope to see it a bit more in divers. This is a secondary aim of this thread. Experienced divers also mess up. When they do it they do it bigger (and longer)!

 

[sunnyboy]

I've scootered on and off for years, sometimes in good vis, lots of times in terrible vis. The main operating principal we used is always the same: Assuming you have good bright lights, you scooter staggered and each following diver shines the light on the scooter of the diver ahead. Somewhere where it's easy to for the diver ahead to see the light shining off his/her scooter.

If at any time you don't see the light of the trailing diver, you stop. Assuming the leading diver is paying attention, this works.

Of course, I've been on a few too many dives where the lead diver is NOT paying attention, and then ... welcome to solo scootering.

 

[Jcp2]

Do underwater scooters come with tail lights and/or mirrors?

 

[uwxplorer]

Divers get separated in soup. Diver shoots SMB and does deco while drifting in current.
I am not sure where the near miss is: everything worked according to plan B.
Congratulations!

 

[fsardone]

Divers get separated in soup. Diver shoots SMB and does deco while drifting in current.
I am not sure where the near miss is: everything worked according to plan B.
Congratulations!

True ... but there was no plan B. That is the near miss. No plan will survive reality, but planning is everything. Allows you to evaluate options and reduce unforeseen circumstances and make others’ action expected and non unexpected.

 

[happy-diver]

Yeah good job Fabio, make some adjustments to your gear and your head
and off you go again

I'm fortunate in that my solo scooter events start with me solo
and as long as I don't too far follow the curvature of the earth
I eventually make it back

 

[fsardone]

Thanks,
no worries the next day I was diving and scootering happily again. An easier dive 45 min at 40mt with about 30’ of deco. 75 total run time .... we did not separate this time!

I am going to implement a few suggestions and the do a solo navigating exercise in a known place and then again ... I was having fun until I’ve lost the buddy.

 

[beester]

Heya Fabio,

Thanks for sharing! Seems like a really nice wreck to dive! I think you did a lot of things right, and some wrong (like with everybody... we are human)

What you did right IMO:

- On team separation shooting an SMB. The charter was already following a towed SMB. By shooting your SMB you increase the chance that they will see you and notice the separation. (by the way watch out with this, in my experience (depending on the smb used) it's very easy to drag the smb underwater while scootering, so you need an SMB with sufficient lift/volume and it needs to be full at the surface).
- Keeping your composure and prioritizing tasks: Going back to priorities first. I'm breathing, CCR status is ok. Shooting an SMB, Ascend and deco strategy. Executing all of this.
- Not scootering and sticking to plan: I might go against some of the advice given, but in this situation I would have done the same and not continued scootering. Team separation is a fact and you are not going to find your buddy in the wild blue yonder. You would increase your taskloading, scootering while towing a smb, managing ascend and deco plan, managing your ccr. hen something goes wrong..stick to the basics and what you know!
- Equipment: Having a PLB (in an area where it's useful (loads of traffic)). I would also add a flare, just to be safe. The PLB can run out of battery or flood, a flare works always. They are not waterproof but I keep mine in one of my backup lights (heser). I remove the battery tube and the flare fits right in this neat little improvised waterproof container. On OW/Wrecks I won't need a 3rd light in any case. I've had a chat with the helicopter team of the Belgian coast guard (don't ask) and they told me that flares are very usefull because they give off a lot of heat and they are also scanning the surface with infrared, and it really stands out in the cold surrounding of the water.

What you could have done better IMO:
- Scooter: You and your team mate were not experienced enough to do this dive with scooters. Taskloading increases a lot while driving a scooter, and team separation is a real thing (as you found out). There are ways to mitigate this risk (both in caves and ow). One is team position, in open water it's very easy to dive shoulder to shoulder or in a slightly stepped position, this way n° 1 doesn't have to look back a lot and n°2 has 1 always in his sight. Next use your lights. N°2 can shine his light on the side of the body of the scooter of n1, clearly communicating that he is still close. Also you need to be vigilant and certainly when you start scootering adjust the speed to the slowest scooter, even switching position and making him n1.
- Planning for team separation: This should always be in the back of your mind when scootering. What if we lose eachother. Communicating also this plan B to the charter captain.
- Taskloading: Never add more than 1 new element to the dive. What was the reason to navigate to shore except for allowing the fiancee of the 2nd diver to also do a dive while you are doing deco? I mean it can be a lot of fun doing a dive like this (wreck and then scootering to shore), but why make it more complex than needed?

That's it from me... like I said... kudos for posting, I'm all for a just society and the only way to build it (at least on this forum) is by posting our little mistakes/incidents.

Cheers

PS: If you are ever up north (I live in Veneto) give me a ping

 

[Scuba Cobra]

Even if you heading varies and meanders, being within 20 degrees of the bearing should have put you close to the intended location.

That is not even close to being true.

First off we do not know if the computer software used has converted his azimuth from grid to magnetic. Second, IF the azimuth given by the software (320 degrees) is a grid azimuth, he would need to manually calculate his magnetic azimuth by adding/ subtracting the declination for his area. The declination for my location is 7 degrees.

Meaning without correction, AND being 20 degrees off azimuth he is looking at being 27 total degrees off azimuth worst case, and 13 degrees off azimuth best case.

If he is traveling 1Km,13 degrees would put him 234m off his intended target grid and 486m off at 27 degrees.