Eric Sedletzky
Contributor
This little beauty happened several weeks ago. I was just going to let it go, but it's been eating at me and I figured not only would it be good to vent and get feedback but it's also alaways good for people to read stuff and learn.
The dive:
A new diver I know and I go up to a popular shore diving spot up on the Sonoma Coast for what I thought was going to be a relaxing dive.
The guy I took is a new diver, brand new (I found out later). By the way he talks you'd think he was diving for years. He thinks knows everything with all of his 12 dives so far. He has the better suit, the better fins, blah blah blah. I'm a very patient person but I found this guy to be odd. He's a very small guy, about 45 years old. He's a carpenter and I've ran into him on different job sites so that's how this day was formed. We also have a few mutual friends so I knew who this guy was but didn't know him that well, certainly not well enough to dive with which I found out the hard way.
OK, so we suit up. BTW, he even had to make a point that he was suited up first and what was taking so long. I pay attention to this stuff. At first I thought maybe he was just razzing, but later I realized he's serious. I really think he suffers bad from short man complex. More on that later. Stick with me, all these details are important.
We're geared up and ready to get in the water I reach over and grab his tank valve just to make sure he turned it on. He did, but he took it personal that I checked. A second later he made a sarcastic remark about if my air was on. He get's in the water before me and starts off. He has a speargun with him and insists that he finds something to shoot. I get in the water and start off. There was an area of kelp we needed to navigate through so I found my path and figured I meet up with him on the other side. I get out there and turn around and he still by the beach. I wait and he finally get's out to me. I ask him what's up and he said he had a leaky mask. Then he want's to know why we didn't do a buddy check. Oh. right you jump in the water first and prend you are waiting on me, get all pissy when I want to make sure you're air is on and you wonder why we forgot the buddy check. Right on.
After we get under way with our surface swim I explain to him that we are in a no take park and that we need to surface swim out of the cove before descending to avaoid breaking the law. He made a few remarks about that as well. I told him "Dude, those are the rules. Live with it!" He wanted to drop down becase he hates surface swims (actually he's never done a surface swim - more later) I'm thinking this is not a relaxing day so far. This guy is really annoying and we haven't even dove yet.
We get out to our drop zone outside of the park. I explain to him that we will be taking a heading of 150 degrees and going out ot some pinnacles. He has never dove here and I have probably 200 dives at this spot alone. As soon as we get to the bottom he bands up his gun and takes off like a banchee. I look around and he's gone. I begin my ascent and I was having a little trouble that day with a squeeky ear so it took me a few minutes. I get up and he's already on the surface and pissed at me. I ask him why he's pissed, he's the one who took off. The whole time he was waving around his loaded speargun and I was yelling at him to keep it away from me. I was really getting upset at this point. I grabbed the gun away from him and unbanded it then gave it back. I reprimanded him for bringing a loaded gun to the surface and told him to never do it again. That's a good way for someone to get killed.
OK, so we get back down and I signal to him to calm down and follow me. I signal a heading of 150 and we begin to move. He bands up his gun again and I can see all he want's to do is get the first fish. I grab him and signal to knock it off and stick with me and to slow down. I can tell he's a very nervous diver with all the tearing around and jerky movements. I noticed he never thought of checking his air or depth or any readings for that matter. I grabbed his pressure guage and noticd he was already down to 600 psi amd we barely even started the dive. I was making plans to turn around with him when he decides to shoot a little fish. It was only a little gopher rock fish no more than 10" long. I signal to him "what the hell are you doing???" The fish took off with the spear and would shooting line all around him. I think the fish got off and was gone after a few seconds. Meanwhile he's all freaked out becase he doesn't know how to get untangled. At this point we're in about 60 feet of water. I calm him down and get the line untangled and somehow the line got between him and his second stage hose. I signalled to him to remove the second out of his mouth and simply get the line out of the way and replace the reg. He wouldn't do it, he refused. Right then I knew this dive could easily result in disaster with him at near panic and overwhelmed not able to do the simplest skills that he never should have been let out of the pool if he couldn't do them. I got the line out finally for him and looked at his pressure guage, he had about 300 psi left. I thought we need to get up now. I still had over 2000 psi left so under normal circustances I would have had plenty of air if he ran out, but he was refusing to take his reg out.
Here's where it went really wrong. All of a sudden his waistbuckle on his rig comes undone and his rig is floating up and is over his head. His eyes turn about the size of dinner plates and he starts grabbing at me pointing. I grab him and get one of the straps, then the other. I pull them back around his waist and try and feed the end of the webbing through, but he had it all boogered up with a big blob of mented plastic so I couldn't feed it through no matter how good I tried. I wound up just grabbing both ends of his waist straps with one hand and started up as controlled as I could with htis guy. At that point he was absolute junk. He couldn't do anything for himself. I had to drag him up , dump air out of his BC for him plus mine, I had to keep track of ascent rate, and make sure we made our stops. All he was doing was clawing for the surface. I had to drag him down to keep him from shooting to the surface. He never did run completely out of air but his guage was pegged on zero. Unfrickin believable.
This was my first actual real scenario rescue.
We came up way far out there. I've done this swim many times in the past and didn't think anything about it. All I heard from this guy was moaning and bitching abou thow far we have to swim now and what a piece of crap the rig he has is (not the rigs fault it's all user error. The guy's an idiot-more on that later)
I finally lost my cool and told him he needs to **** or I was going to leave him out there and I'd pick him up down at the next cove after the current had it's way with him. I told him "Look, roll over on your back and let me tow you in OK. I need the excercise". He snapped back "Get away from me! Somebody will see and call the rescue chopper" OMG!!
After we got back to the beach I had a talk with him about went wrong. Basically he thought the whole thing was funny and I was overreacting. He also blamed everything on me somehow. It was very very frustrating to say the least. I seemed to get nowhere with him and his beligerant attitude.
Later I found out the guy totally lied to me about his skill level, number of dives everything. Turns out he got certified privately by his brother in law and only had 10 or 12 dives off his intructors inflatable. He had never done a simple beach dive, and when I quizzed him about skills he had a blank look on his face and told me they never did any of that stuff. When we were out there and went down the second time and I signalled to him 150 and pointed to my compass, he admitted later that he didn't know what I was talking about. I came to realize that his brother in law probably got tired of arguing with this jerk and just said "Here, here's your c-card, beat it!" Believe me, he didn't do anybody any favors.
This guy is an absolute idiot and a hazard. I say that because he has no ability to learn. All he does is argue. He argues every point which he knows nothing about. There was another guy who took him freeding several times and wound up screaming at him because all he does is open his mouth and close his ears.
I can just imagine what would have happened if he was out with another new diver.
As far as I'm concerned the guy is unteachable. He couldn't even do a simple beach dive without belly aching and complaining about everything. And still to this day he runs his mouth. He learned nothing.
I told him I will never dive with him again. I also told him for his own good and especially for the good of others that may get stuck diving with him, to take a ligitimate advanced class through a shop with other students and a ligitimate rescue class through a shop with other students before he dives again. That is if he doesn't get thrown out of the class!
Now I know (crystal clear) why I choose to solo dive or dive with veterans I know personally. I never want to be put in that position again.
Wow! you never know who is out there. Scary.
The dive:
A new diver I know and I go up to a popular shore diving spot up on the Sonoma Coast for what I thought was going to be a relaxing dive.
The guy I took is a new diver, brand new (I found out later). By the way he talks you'd think he was diving for years. He thinks knows everything with all of his 12 dives so far. He has the better suit, the better fins, blah blah blah. I'm a very patient person but I found this guy to be odd. He's a very small guy, about 45 years old. He's a carpenter and I've ran into him on different job sites so that's how this day was formed. We also have a few mutual friends so I knew who this guy was but didn't know him that well, certainly not well enough to dive with which I found out the hard way.
OK, so we suit up. BTW, he even had to make a point that he was suited up first and what was taking so long. I pay attention to this stuff. At first I thought maybe he was just razzing, but later I realized he's serious. I really think he suffers bad from short man complex. More on that later. Stick with me, all these details are important.
We're geared up and ready to get in the water I reach over and grab his tank valve just to make sure he turned it on. He did, but he took it personal that I checked. A second later he made a sarcastic remark about if my air was on. He get's in the water before me and starts off. He has a speargun with him and insists that he finds something to shoot. I get in the water and start off. There was an area of kelp we needed to navigate through so I found my path and figured I meet up with him on the other side. I get out there and turn around and he still by the beach. I wait and he finally get's out to me. I ask him what's up and he said he had a leaky mask. Then he want's to know why we didn't do a buddy check. Oh. right you jump in the water first and prend you are waiting on me, get all pissy when I want to make sure you're air is on and you wonder why we forgot the buddy check. Right on.
After we get under way with our surface swim I explain to him that we are in a no take park and that we need to surface swim out of the cove before descending to avaoid breaking the law. He made a few remarks about that as well. I told him "Dude, those are the rules. Live with it!" He wanted to drop down becase he hates surface swims (actually he's never done a surface swim - more later) I'm thinking this is not a relaxing day so far. This guy is really annoying and we haven't even dove yet.
We get out to our drop zone outside of the park. I explain to him that we will be taking a heading of 150 degrees and going out ot some pinnacles. He has never dove here and I have probably 200 dives at this spot alone. As soon as we get to the bottom he bands up his gun and takes off like a banchee. I look around and he's gone. I begin my ascent and I was having a little trouble that day with a squeeky ear so it took me a few minutes. I get up and he's already on the surface and pissed at me. I ask him why he's pissed, he's the one who took off. The whole time he was waving around his loaded speargun and I was yelling at him to keep it away from me. I was really getting upset at this point. I grabbed the gun away from him and unbanded it then gave it back. I reprimanded him for bringing a loaded gun to the surface and told him to never do it again. That's a good way for someone to get killed.
OK, so we get back down and I signal to him to calm down and follow me. I signal a heading of 150 and we begin to move. He bands up his gun again and I can see all he want's to do is get the first fish. I grab him and signal to knock it off and stick with me and to slow down. I can tell he's a very nervous diver with all the tearing around and jerky movements. I noticed he never thought of checking his air or depth or any readings for that matter. I grabbed his pressure guage and noticd he was already down to 600 psi amd we barely even started the dive. I was making plans to turn around with him when he decides to shoot a little fish. It was only a little gopher rock fish no more than 10" long. I signal to him "what the hell are you doing???" The fish took off with the spear and would shooting line all around him. I think the fish got off and was gone after a few seconds. Meanwhile he's all freaked out becase he doesn't know how to get untangled. At this point we're in about 60 feet of water. I calm him down and get the line untangled and somehow the line got between him and his second stage hose. I signalled to him to remove the second out of his mouth and simply get the line out of the way and replace the reg. He wouldn't do it, he refused. Right then I knew this dive could easily result in disaster with him at near panic and overwhelmed not able to do the simplest skills that he never should have been let out of the pool if he couldn't do them. I got the line out finally for him and looked at his pressure guage, he had about 300 psi left. I thought we need to get up now. I still had over 2000 psi left so under normal circustances I would have had plenty of air if he ran out, but he was refusing to take his reg out.
Here's where it went really wrong. All of a sudden his waistbuckle on his rig comes undone and his rig is floating up and is over his head. His eyes turn about the size of dinner plates and he starts grabbing at me pointing. I grab him and get one of the straps, then the other. I pull them back around his waist and try and feed the end of the webbing through, but he had it all boogered up with a big blob of mented plastic so I couldn't feed it through no matter how good I tried. I wound up just grabbing both ends of his waist straps with one hand and started up as controlled as I could with htis guy. At that point he was absolute junk. He couldn't do anything for himself. I had to drag him up , dump air out of his BC for him plus mine, I had to keep track of ascent rate, and make sure we made our stops. All he was doing was clawing for the surface. I had to drag him down to keep him from shooting to the surface. He never did run completely out of air but his guage was pegged on zero. Unfrickin believable.
This was my first actual real scenario rescue.
We came up way far out there. I've done this swim many times in the past and didn't think anything about it. All I heard from this guy was moaning and bitching abou thow far we have to swim now and what a piece of crap the rig he has is (not the rigs fault it's all user error. The guy's an idiot-more on that later)
I finally lost my cool and told him he needs to **** or I was going to leave him out there and I'd pick him up down at the next cove after the current had it's way with him. I told him "Look, roll over on your back and let me tow you in OK. I need the excercise". He snapped back "Get away from me! Somebody will see and call the rescue chopper" OMG!!
After we got back to the beach I had a talk with him about went wrong. Basically he thought the whole thing was funny and I was overreacting. He also blamed everything on me somehow. It was very very frustrating to say the least. I seemed to get nowhere with him and his beligerant attitude.
Later I found out the guy totally lied to me about his skill level, number of dives everything. Turns out he got certified privately by his brother in law and only had 10 or 12 dives off his intructors inflatable. He had never done a simple beach dive, and when I quizzed him about skills he had a blank look on his face and told me they never did any of that stuff. When we were out there and went down the second time and I signalled to him 150 and pointed to my compass, he admitted later that he didn't know what I was talking about. I came to realize that his brother in law probably got tired of arguing with this jerk and just said "Here, here's your c-card, beat it!" Believe me, he didn't do anybody any favors.
This guy is an absolute idiot and a hazard. I say that because he has no ability to learn. All he does is argue. He argues every point which he knows nothing about. There was another guy who took him freeding several times and wound up screaming at him because all he does is open his mouth and close his ears.
I can just imagine what would have happened if he was out with another new diver.
As far as I'm concerned the guy is unteachable. He couldn't even do a simple beach dive without belly aching and complaining about everything. And still to this day he runs his mouth. He learned nothing.
I told him I will never dive with him again. I also told him for his own good and especially for the good of others that may get stuck diving with him, to take a ligitimate advanced class through a shop with other students and a ligitimate rescue class through a shop with other students before he dives again. That is if he doesn't get thrown out of the class!
Now I know (crystal clear) why I choose to solo dive or dive with veterans I know personally. I never want to be put in that position again.
Wow! you never know who is out there. Scary.
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