Don't move the upline!

[jim T.]

I wish to echo Bob, Doug's and others supportive statements for Lynne. All three of those people
mentored me at some point and made me very comfortable allowing for my own mistakes.

I'm very glad to learn from the errors that were owned up to in this thread. I'm very thankful that I'm allowed to make and own up to my own mistakes while learning from people who are at least recognizing and striving to attain excellence on every dive.

I'd rather dive with someone who's revisited their mistakes and has had the courage to
ask for better suggestions and methods rather than someone who just shrugs it off.

As a sailor I sure sit around swapping sea stories with other boaters and we all learn from each other that way. Sailors have been doing that for thousands of years. Divers only 50 or so.
It's a valuable process to learn from each other, think about how we would've acted.reacted and maybe even dispell a little shiver of how things might have been worse.
It's pretty healthy in my opinion. It's the divers with no sea stories that worry me. They usually haven't recognized that a lesson was being handed to them so they never learned anything from it.

Lynne learns and then passes it on to others with humility.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Lastly, just like when Lynn and others say they wouldn't dive with someone of course it is most usually hypothetical. Come on already.

I've only ever known Lynne to say she wouldn't dive with someone once ... and that was after diving with him and getting put in a situation that made her feel unsafe. Nothing hypothetical about that.

I didn't personally agree with her ... at that point I'd take it upon myself to help that person reconsider their approach to diving ... but that's a difference between Lynne and me, and I completely respect and understand her decision.

Beyond that, if there's ever been something posted here about her not diving with someone I didn't see it ... I only read a handful of the forums on this board anymore.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

FWIW, people need to remember that "experience" should refer to the exact situation. In this situation none of the divers were experienced in moving hooks etc.

I wouldn't have been either, I've never done a dive like it and it would be completely new to me. I.E. I'd have zero experience (beyond one time making sure the anchor wasn't stuck under a rock because my group was the first down).

This is a good wakeup call for anyone who is experienced in their setting and then moves into a new situation. Congratulations, you're about to learn something new.

This particular dive is often a "learning experience" for divers ... it was for me the first time I dived it, and I was fortunate to be accompanied on that dive by a man with a LOT of experience.

The wreck sits out in the middle of a shipping lane, in water that's known for strong surface current. I've done this dive off of five different boats ... three commercial and two private ... and they've all either hooked the wreck or some of the rip-rap surrounding it. If you don't, you get a sand bottom with not much to hook into ... and except under extremely mild exchanges, you WILL drag your anchor. That's why commercial operators just try to hook into the wreck. Live boating it is an option, but with the currents and the fact that the site's well away from visual references it's easy to drift off the site in a live boat. Richard's suggestion of a shot line attached to a small buoy is a feasible alternative, but the commercial operators I've done the dive with don't do it that way, and the private boats I've dived there with don't leave a tender on the boat (we just anchor and go diving). So you hook into something solid ... and when you're done diving, it's typical to move the anchor off the wreck and ascend up the anchor line.

FWIW - I've probably had to do free ascents about half the time I've done this wreck. To be honest, this particular site is one reason I decided to add that skill to my AOW class ... having seen the skill level of a lot of divers that do it off the commercial boats.

It's only a 70-foot dive, but conditions can make this a ... challenging ... dive at times. The lessons being discussed here aren't unusual for this dive site ... what is unusual is that someone who made them is willing to discuss them publicly.

This is a good wakeup call for anyone who is experienced in their setting and then moves into a new situation. Congratulations, you're about to learn something new.

A lot of the reason for disagreements on public Internet forums boils down to regional differences, and the different diving conditions we experience where we each dive. Different conditions call for different protocols, and we develop our protocols around regional conditions. When we read someone else's experiences, we tend to apply how we would approach the situation ... but it's based on conditions we're used to. Often those won't be the best approach for the actual situation.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)