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About a month ago I wrote about how a simple training dive made me realize how minor changes in gear configuration may cause serious problems in an emergency.
Last weekend I had another epiphany. We were four persons from my club going for a dive at our club's training site, and we had agreed to do a couple of drills at the end of the dive. After surfacing and paddling into the shallows, we proceeded to drill removal of buddy's weights on the surface. Now, this should be a very relevant emergency exercise, as there was a fatality in Norway last summer where the victim was able to surface, but lost consciousness, and since his buddy wasn't able¹ to drop his weights or otherwise secure positive buoyancy, the victim sank and drowned.
Now, we had gone through weight release during the buddy check, and I was fairly certain that I knew how to release my buddy's weights. Note that this guy wasn't my regular buddy - I know I can release his weights - but another guy in the club who I had been diving with earlier. His BCD had a slightly different system for securing the weight pockets than my regular buddy's BCD has. Anyway, in about 1.5m water, he was lying still in the water as we had agreed, I inflated his BCD and proceeded to release his weights. Or, rather, I tried. And tried. And tried. And was not able to unlock the mechanism. It was a scary discovery. In a real emergency, with complete loss of buoyancy, I might have been in the same situation as the poor guy who last summer saw his buddy sink slowly toward his death.
I think that the next time I'm buddied up with another person than my regular buddy, I'll check that I really can release his weights before we splash.
¹ There's more to the story, but those details aren't really relevant here.
Last weekend I had another epiphany. We were four persons from my club going for a dive at our club's training site, and we had agreed to do a couple of drills at the end of the dive. After surfacing and paddling into the shallows, we proceeded to drill removal of buddy's weights on the surface. Now, this should be a very relevant emergency exercise, as there was a fatality in Norway last summer where the victim was able to surface, but lost consciousness, and since his buddy wasn't able¹ to drop his weights or otherwise secure positive buoyancy, the victim sank and drowned.
Now, we had gone through weight release during the buddy check, and I was fairly certain that I knew how to release my buddy's weights. Note that this guy wasn't my regular buddy - I know I can release his weights - but another guy in the club who I had been diving with earlier. His BCD had a slightly different system for securing the weight pockets than my regular buddy's BCD has. Anyway, in about 1.5m water, he was lying still in the water as we had agreed, I inflated his BCD and proceeded to release his weights. Or, rather, I tried. And tried. And tried. And was not able to unlock the mechanism. It was a scary discovery. In a real emergency, with complete loss of buoyancy, I might have been in the same situation as the poor guy who last summer saw his buddy sink slowly toward his death.
I think that the next time I'm buddied up with another person than my regular buddy, I'll check that I really can release his weights before we splash.
¹ There's more to the story, but those details aren't really relevant here.