Dive Goes Bad Fast

[David P]

First: thanks for sharing and Im glad you two are all right.

Perhaps the entire cause of the free flow was simply the reg, but people (especially here on SB) are quick to bash regs that are not Scuba Pro, Atomics, or Apeks.

Honestly no disrespect, but with 20 and 30 dives, AOW and Rescue (to a slightly lesser degree) don't mean squat.

Im glad to hear that you two were practicing and working up to you dive, that makes me believe that you are serious about diving and also take the risks seriously.

I understand and agree that your buddies blood was-a-floin' and probably on the edge of panic, so when he saw another reg, the probably equated that to safety and switched again... too bad he should have stayed on yours and just relaxed.

dovetail last two comments: perhaps you should practice a free flowing reg and get practice reaching back and feathering the valve. Buoyancy is key, practice ascents! even though you are not doing deco dives, ascend 10 feet, and STOP get everything situated and ascend 10 more feet, STOP. Keep doing this until you can move exactly 10 feet (ie 30 to 20 not 31 to 19)in 30 seconds. Then do it again sharing air, then do it again with one of you maskless. This sounds like torture but it is SOOO good for your buoyancy control.

I would recommend against doubles at this point. Yes you just had a heck of a scare, yes doubles could have made the entire accident a giant non issue.... but only with practice and experience. Doubles are heavy, and not as nimble as what you are currently diving. More things can go wrong with doubles, you need to be more (Im blanking on the word here...)responsible, "eh I have plenty of air we can stay down longer or go deeper" and get yourself into a world of hurt. Practice with your buddy, get to the point buoyancy is second nature. Then when the feces hits the fan, that is one thing you don't have to think about, it just happens and lets you focus on other issues.

 

[diverrobs]

I just glad we practiced. We plan to do more practice in local quarries and go out with some instructors again. We need to ge our confidence back and can always use practice. All the advice is great.

 

[Jim Kerr]

I think you did very well in trying to control the situation. Your buddy appeared to be right on the edge of shear panic. You did excellent in preventing that from happening. Learn from the mistakes that were made and use them to become a better diver.

 

[Charlie99]

Some comments (not criticisms) .....

IIRC, some South African dive club did some studies on how divers handled unexpected air sharing events. They found that a suprisingly high percentage of divers took OVER 2 MINUTES to sort out stuff before starting their ascent.

One should always have enough air for both yourself and one's buddy to ABORT a dive. Note that I say ABORT, not COMPLETE a dive.

It sounds like your buddy wanted to do the right thing. IMMEDIATE CONTROLLED ASCENT. You, however, wanted to go back to the ascent line.

I find it helps to distinguish clearly in my mind what is an acceptable ABORT to a dive, and how I would like to complete the dive. Although I've never had a diving incident where this distinction is important, I have had a couple non-diving incidents during my life where I kept trying to continue on an activity in a more or less normal fashion when in hindsight I should have changed over to an emergency or abort procedure. The result of an abort isn't a pretty or nice (in your case, it had you doing a long surface swim), but there comes a time the important thing is to safely abort.

Thinking about abort plans and discussing them ahead of time may keep you from improperly focussing on such things as getting back to the mooring line, when what you really need to be focussing on is doing a safe, controlled ascent with the available gas.

OK. Time to hop off of my soapbox.

Charlie Allen

p.s. The fact that you descended and had to fin to maintain depth means that you were significantly negatively buoyant. And then you got way positively buoyant. Practice, practice, practice controlling your buoyancy until it is 2nd nature to be neutral at all times. In other words, you should be able to stop finning at any time and stay at the same depth. The other thing that the S.A. dive club found is that lots of the diver pairs descending signficantly when they stopped finning while starting to air share.

 

[lowviz]

Gas management is key to survival. DIR types use RockBottom, I use something quite similar. The whole idea is that you and your buddy have reached your "thumbs up" when one or the other of you gets to the point that you have just enough gas to get both of you back. Try to get a gas consumption rate on that dive and use it to calculate how much gas you would have used for a normal ascent under that much stress. Search 'Lamont' for gas management, he did a nice job for sport divers (with a DIR flavor). Don't dive 80's past 80 feet, the reserve just isn't there.

Gas management, Gas management, Gas management .

 

[Jim Kerr]

Some comments (not criticisms) .....

IIRC, some South African dive club did some studies on how divers handled unexpected air sharing events. They found that a suprisingly high percentage of divers took OVER 2 MINUTES to sort out stuff before starting their ascent.

One should always have enough air for both yourself and one's buddy to ABORT a dive. Note that I say ABORT, not COMPLETE a dive.

It sounds like your buddy wanted to do the right thing. IMMEDIATE CONTROLLED ASCENT. You, however, wanted to go back to the ascent line.

I find it helps to distinguish clearly in my mind what is an acceptable ABORT to a dive, and how I would like to complete the dive. Although I've never had a diving incident where this distinction is important, I have had a couple non-diving incidents during my life where I kept trying to continue on an activity in a more or less normal fashion when in hindsight I should have changed over to an emergency or abort procedure. The result of an abort isn't a pretty or nice (in your case, it had you doing a long surface swim), but there comes a time the important thing is to safely abort.

Thinking about abort plans and discussing them ahead of time may keep you from improperly focussing on such things as getting back to the mooring line, when what you really need to be focussing on is doing a safe, controlled ascent with the available gas.

OK. Time to hop off of my soapbox.

Charlie Allen

p.s. The fact that you descended and had to fin to maintain depth means that you were significantly negatively buoyant. And then you got way positively buoyant. Practice, practice, practice controlling your buoyancy until it is 2nd nature to be neutral at all times. In other words, you should be able to stop finning at any time and stay at the same depth. The other thing that the S.A. dive club found is that lots of the diver pairs descending signficantly when they stopped finning while starting to air share.

Sorry but, I do not concider that continuing the dive by any means. I believe the OP intended to abort the dive with his buddy but wanted to use the ascent line for control. It sounded like the ascent line was very near by and could have been used to stop their rapid ascent. However, had the line been at the other end of the wreck then it would not have been a good idea. I think he did very well for someone with only 20 dives under his belt.

 

[fppf]

Don't know about your area, but doing a free accent with controled rates and stops could put you a good distance from the boat.

If you want a ride home I would use the moring line unless in an absolute emergency. You and your buddy should always have enough air to swim back to the line, make an accent, including any stops and surface.

 

[diverrobs]

I was less than 60' from the mooring line. I wanted the line to control the ascent (just to make things less complicated). When my buddy indicated up NOW. We went up. I had 2500lbs in my HP100 when my buddies free flow happened so we had easily enought air to get to the line (1 min) and then ascent with safety 5 min. It would have been tight and we may have had to cut the safety a little short but we would have made it safely up the line. If I had been less than 1500, I would have headed for the surface.

 

[grf88]

The temperature on the wreck on Saturday was 43 degrees F. a temperature at which many regs can freeflow. If you are going to dive those depths at those temperatures you had better be prepared for the possibility of a freeflow and recognize that 2 people breathing of of the one reg could quite easily initiate a freeflow in the donors reg. The other problem with freeflows is that the mass of bubbles can be very disorienting. Practice breathing off a freeflowing reg, the best place is in the pool and practice air sharing where the recipient diver is holding down his purge button, again the pool is the best place.
With only 20 and 30 dives respectively a free ascent was probably not the best choice when you had ample air to return to the line.
Bye the way I have to agree the visibility on the Sheboygan on Saturday was incredible.

 

[LittleOne]

All I can say is how smoothly the switches went. How no one really panicked and bolted. How patient you guys were. Sounds like a very impressive handling of an emergency.