Don't move the upline!

[do it easy]

Another advantage of a liftbag on the grapple that it dramatically improves the visibility of the grapple.

Yup- I'll sometimes use my neon orange 6' SMB with reflective tape- I can shoot my light in the general direction and see where the upline is.

 

[Cacia]

When you are diving "pure" unified team diving, how does this effect the decision making process? Does the team leader make these calls and everyone else goes along? In this case would it have improved the outcome?

And do the boat captains have a formal place in the chain?

 

[TSandM]

Boat captains are very much part of the team. That's why you're supposed to think about the captain you're dealing with, and whether he's somebody you WANT on your team or not. This boat and captain are excellent.

On a unified team, every team member has a brain and a voice. It was well within my scope to have objected to what was being done. I just didn't do it.

 

[Kingpatzer]

How about the other way -- instead of bouncing to free it .. why not bounce to place it in the first instance? That way it doesn't need to be moved mid- or end- dive?

 

[TSandM]

You know, I don't have a good answer for that, except that, an hour after a 100 foot dive, I don't feel good about the idea of a bounce, particularly if it might involve a few minutes at depth and significant exertion (as this did). I don't have a lot of data to support this feeling, except the idea that, if any of us were bubbling (as we might well have been), the bubbles might get through the lungs if compressed again, and expand on ascent. By doing a longer dive, and a careful minimum deco ascent, we reduce the risk of that happening (whatever that risk is). I'm so conservative, I even doubled the shallow stops, although with an hour's surface interval, that's not strictly required.

I think this could have been handled neatly and safely just by having thought the issues through on the boat and arranged some simple signaling. And the big message was not to move important references unless you're sure all the other divers who might need to use them are out of the water.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

A good lesson learned, Lynne. And I'm pleased that your friends were able to handle the mid-water ascent with no issues.

My solutions would be ... when moving the upline, run a spool from the original location to the new location ... if more than one team is down, place a cookie on the spool line at the original location. When you come back, if the cookie is there, remove the cookie and proceed to the upline. If the cookie is gone, retrieve the spool as you proceed to the upline.

It all has to be discussed prior to the dive.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Randy43068]

Diving where they hook the wrecks can definitely be a learning experience. I learned the hard way to carry a strobe and put it on the line, we tried a cyalume stick and it didn't show up very well in 2-4 foot visibility. Those blue (or green in our case) water ascents can really raise your heart rate, my DM and I couldn't find the line even though we knew it was next to the door on the starboard side of the tug. How the new AOW students found the stupid thing I'll never know because the DM and I searched for nearly 5 minutes but I remember hanging in the middle of nowhere at 15 feet for 3 minutes HOPING we would be somewhere near the boat when we surfaced.

The second wreck was when we tied the cyalume stick to the line to make it more visible. I missed that line too, I felt my student tug on my fin and turned to see what he wanted. He pointed 2 feet above me, I was swimming right under the line and couldn't see it. I had been counting standpipes (the wreck is upside down) and KNEW the line should be between the one I was looking at and the next one but I still never saw it. Having a strobe tied off probably would have made it a lot easier to locate that line.
Ber :lilbunny:

Glad it worked out... with that kind of viz you probably should have run a reel from the upline. That too, I learned from experience.

 

[TSandM]

Well, I don't think very many of us recreational divers in the Sound carry cookies, or even own them. But I think almost everybody is carrying SOMETHING they could clip off to the line as a signal.

 

[Rainer]

Glad it worked out... with that kind of viz you probably should have run a reel from the upline. That too, I learned from experience.

Agreed. Out here, if vis is that bad (often the case), most dive teams will run a reel. Free ascents in the North Atlantic are idiotic.

 

[TSandM]

Well, we're pretty used to free ascents in the Sound, because the vast majority of our boat dives are done, as I said, with live boat pickup and no anchor or buoy line to go up or down. That was the saving grace for our novice companions. (We'd actually done a couple of boat dives the prior week which required free ascents, and those were the first boat dives in the Sound for one of our friends. I worry about them mostly because I find free ascents WAY easier with a bag shoot, and neither of them knows how to do that.)