Diver Joe
Contributor
Spent this past week in Kingston diving with my buddy Frank from Halifax. We dove a couple of times each day Mon to Fri and had an excellent week of diving.
We did however have one close call that I feel is worth reporting.
On Wed evening, we conducted our third dive of the day, a night dive on the Wolfe Islander.
At approx 13 min into the dive, at the main deck level, I notice Frank checking his SPG and shaking his head as if there was a problem. He looked somewhat puzzled and then pointed to his gauge... I took a look, the computer looked fine and the SPG showed lots of Gas...
I did not recognize the problem and gave him the WTF look/shrug and he again pointed to the SPG.... Indicating that there was some sort of problem.
"Well Frank, I don't know what your problem is buddy, here's a Thumbs-UP, I'm calling the dive."
Frank acknowledges with a "Ah ****" Thumbs UP and a Nod of the head. We proceed forward towards the Up Line...I keep Frank Close to my side and at one point take his arm to say this way and to keep him moving as he is still checking his SPG and shaking his head.
In a Flash!!!...Frank is in my face and he is reaching for my short hose Reg. Oh Oh! He get's the Reg without difficulty and is breathing it a little on the heavy side, but not in a paniced state...
I give him about 30 sec's, and give a few reassuring pats on the shoulders.... MY short hose is still bungeed around my neck, so we are very much stuck face to face, I tap the Reg in His mouth then my own and then point my finger back and forth between the two regs, indicating that we should switch...He nods and the switch is done...
Frank now has my long hose...but we still have a problem, that being that when I gave him the long hose, it somehow became entangled with my bungee on the short hose Reg. We are still entangled face to face at depth and in darkness. Our lights were bobbing about and provided enough light. We were breathing and did not panic, thank God.
I reached down do my calf and pulled my knife and in a few strokes cut the bungee.... I quickly decided to dump the knife and tossed it to the deck of the ship.
Frank actually started to move towards retreiving the knife...I gave him a little tap and indicated to leave it and gave him the Thumbs Up again.... He nodded..... I started towards the bow and up line but quickly realized that Frank was going for a direct open water ascent... I was not in favor of this as we had overcome the entanglement and were now in a recovered position as far as I was concerned.
In order to avoid any further confusion I decided to go with Frank's call for the short route to the surface. Problem now...getting my light onto my Computer to monitor the ascent while dumping from my Wings...Problem was that my UK D8 was to bright and I could not read the screen.... Went to my smaller back up light and I saw 40ft in what I thought to be a too quickly and dumped air as fast as possible... We went Negative and recovered at 55ft...
Thumbs UP...Lets try again....This time I didn't bother to look at the computer.... Dumped a little air when I felt it was required and made sure that my breathing was relaxed/open....
It was a great relief to break the surface.....We both felt okay and swam to the Buoy and decended on the line to 20ft for approx 10min...
We surfaced and Frank was still not aware of what the problem was...He shouted What The F.... I asked what was the problem and he said that he didn't know or didn't understand....His SPG was stuck or something because at 15 min into the dive the Gague had not moved any.... this was what he was trying to point out to me.....
After I had called the dive and as we proceeded towards the upline....he could tell that he was on the last couple of breaths of air in his tank....but the SPG still said full.....At this point he was about to switch to his pony bottle...but when he checked the Pony's SPG...the damm this was empty... What the hell is going on????!!!
Frank then continued with his WTF is going on.....He said that he had checked and that Pony was full before he went into the water.
I pointed out that his problem was that he must have been breathing his Pony bottle for the entire dive and that is why he found it to be empty and that's why his main SPG still showed full.
All Frank could say was NO!!!! I can't believe it..... We traced his bungeed/necklaced Reg back and sure enough...it ran back to his main tank... In the darkness when getting dressed on the boat he had mistakenly necklaced his main Reg and entered the water breathing off his Pony...
We did bubble checks and looked each other over on both of our earlier dives that day....But did not for this dive... Frank helped me into my doubles and I splashed in....He got into his BC and splashed in...gave the Okay and we proceeded down the line...
We went back early the next morning and retrieved my knife.
We relearned a few lessons here....Were very lucky and will certainly take closer closer look at each other in the future.
Please make sure that you/your buddy is breathing the correct Reg. And give each other that good look over before heading down the line.
We did however have one close call that I feel is worth reporting.
On Wed evening, we conducted our third dive of the day, a night dive on the Wolfe Islander.
At approx 13 min into the dive, at the main deck level, I notice Frank checking his SPG and shaking his head as if there was a problem. He looked somewhat puzzled and then pointed to his gauge... I took a look, the computer looked fine and the SPG showed lots of Gas...
I did not recognize the problem and gave him the WTF look/shrug and he again pointed to the SPG.... Indicating that there was some sort of problem.
"Well Frank, I don't know what your problem is buddy, here's a Thumbs-UP, I'm calling the dive."
Frank acknowledges with a "Ah ****" Thumbs UP and a Nod of the head. We proceed forward towards the Up Line...I keep Frank Close to my side and at one point take his arm to say this way and to keep him moving as he is still checking his SPG and shaking his head.
In a Flash!!!...Frank is in my face and he is reaching for my short hose Reg. Oh Oh! He get's the Reg without difficulty and is breathing it a little on the heavy side, but not in a paniced state...
I give him about 30 sec's, and give a few reassuring pats on the shoulders.... MY short hose is still bungeed around my neck, so we are very much stuck face to face, I tap the Reg in His mouth then my own and then point my finger back and forth between the two regs, indicating that we should switch...He nods and the switch is done...
Frank now has my long hose...but we still have a problem, that being that when I gave him the long hose, it somehow became entangled with my bungee on the short hose Reg. We are still entangled face to face at depth and in darkness. Our lights were bobbing about and provided enough light. We were breathing and did not panic, thank God.
I reached down do my calf and pulled my knife and in a few strokes cut the bungee.... I quickly decided to dump the knife and tossed it to the deck of the ship.
Frank actually started to move towards retreiving the knife...I gave him a little tap and indicated to leave it and gave him the Thumbs Up again.... He nodded..... I started towards the bow and up line but quickly realized that Frank was going for a direct open water ascent... I was not in favor of this as we had overcome the entanglement and were now in a recovered position as far as I was concerned.
In order to avoid any further confusion I decided to go with Frank's call for the short route to the surface. Problem now...getting my light onto my Computer to monitor the ascent while dumping from my Wings...Problem was that my UK D8 was to bright and I could not read the screen.... Went to my smaller back up light and I saw 40ft in what I thought to be a too quickly and dumped air as fast as possible... We went Negative and recovered at 55ft...
Thumbs UP...Lets try again....This time I didn't bother to look at the computer.... Dumped a little air when I felt it was required and made sure that my breathing was relaxed/open....
It was a great relief to break the surface.....We both felt okay and swam to the Buoy and decended on the line to 20ft for approx 10min...
We surfaced and Frank was still not aware of what the problem was...He shouted What The F.... I asked what was the problem and he said that he didn't know or didn't understand....His SPG was stuck or something because at 15 min into the dive the Gague had not moved any.... this was what he was trying to point out to me.....
After I had called the dive and as we proceeded towards the upline....he could tell that he was on the last couple of breaths of air in his tank....but the SPG still said full.....At this point he was about to switch to his pony bottle...but when he checked the Pony's SPG...the damm this was empty... What the hell is going on????!!!
Frank then continued with his WTF is going on.....He said that he had checked and that Pony was full before he went into the water.
I pointed out that his problem was that he must have been breathing his Pony bottle for the entire dive and that is why he found it to be empty and that's why his main SPG still showed full.
All Frank could say was NO!!!! I can't believe it..... We traced his bungeed/necklaced Reg back and sure enough...it ran back to his main tank... In the darkness when getting dressed on the boat he had mistakenly necklaced his main Reg and entered the water breathing off his Pony...
We did bubble checks and looked each other over on both of our earlier dives that day....But did not for this dive... Frank helped me into my doubles and I splashed in....He got into his BC and splashed in...gave the Okay and we proceeded down the line...
We went back early the next morning and retrieved my knife.
We relearned a few lessons here....Were very lucky and will certainly take closer closer look at each other in the future.
Please make sure that you/your buddy is breathing the correct Reg. And give each other that good look over before heading down the line.
