Don't move the upline!

[mwm]

Thank you TSandM and PeterGuy. I have been reading this board for quite some time now. Thanks to you and other selfless people like you that post both good and bad experiences, I have learned so much that I am starting to think of myself as knowledgeable enough to participate.

On my 6th ocean dive I found myself on the receiving end of exactly this same situation. Our current my have been a little stronger. When we could not find the up line my buddy and I started to search, which made me nervous. When we still couldn't find it, I knew I was breathing harder and faster. When I reached 500 psi at 70fsw I signaled my buddy to ascend. He (with much more experience than I) signaled for me to stay still while he swam around and looked some more. I waved bye-bye and started a solo free assent. I completed a normal safety stop and went for the surface. When I came up I had 150psi and was 100 yards from the boat. Being so new I didn't even think about finning into the current on assent. Just before I made it back to the boat my buddy popped up. He never found the line but came up about 20 yards from the boat. Once on board we had a very long discussion.

In retrospect it was scary but I never lost my head and learned so much on several different levels. Today I would not change anything that happened. The experience made me a better and smarter diver. The other team you refer to will also be better and smarter.

 

[Thalassamania]

This was far and away the most dangerous thing that occurred on the dive.

One should ever use your buoyancy device to lift an object or one's buddy. This too can be very dangerous for many reasons.

There have been any number of accidents cause by loosing hold of a heavy object in exactly those circumstances.

Thanks for being "fish in a barrel." I'm sure it helped lots of folks learn several import lessons. Your candidness takes real guts.

 

[nereas]

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.)

OK, I will share a story with you, my beloved TS&M (& her hubbie).

Proposed dive plan, offered by West Point grad retired USMC colonel, was to descend the anchor line, to our technical MOD (185 fsw), swim over to the next seamount about 100 ft away on a compass azimuth, pop a SMB from seamount #2, and drift deco to re-ascend.

Concurrence by local tech diver #2, "Sure, sounds good to me."

Concurrence by local tech diver #3, "OK I will dive with you guys, sure."

Objection #1, offered by local tech diver #4, "I am going to stay on the original seamount that the boat is anchored on, and do all my deco back up the anchor line."

Objection #2, by me, "Colonel, go ahead and dive with #2 and #3, and I will buddy up with #4 and stay on the original seamount."

Final outcome:

Great dive by #4 and me. We circled the seamount, came back to the anchor line, made sure the anchor was not fowled, then re-ascended it for our deco.

The other team of 3 got totally separated, ended up drift deco-ing solo, and we had to fish them out of the water about a mile down-current, separated from each other by several hundred yards. After the dive they were no longer on speaking terms with each other, and one of them asked the boat to pull in close to shore, where he jumped off with all his gear and swam back to shore and to his car and left, before the second dive.

Moral of the story: Keep It Simple.

 

[Cacia]

those West Point guys will mess you up all the time, lol.

 

[nereas]

..., 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.

Exactly right!

I had also felt that sickening throwing-up feeling when The Colonel proposed his overly complex dive plan. Compass azimuths in poor vis. Exertion swims at depth while on trimix. Drift deco. Leaving the security of the anchor line and seamount.

How much harder did this guy want to make it??

I was getting ready to be the party pooper, and object, when one of the other techdivers objected before I could get the words out of my mouth.

After that point, then it was easy for me to say that I would simply buddy up with the other guy who was objecting. I did not even need to object. It looked like I was just doing everyone a favor by being his buddy, when in reality I had the very same objections myself!

 

[nereas]

Diving where they hook the wrecks can definitely be a learning experience. I learned the hard way ...
Ber :lilbunny:

Don't we all !!!

You are exactly right, about non-moored wrecks.


Now, I have read everyone's replies. My reactions are these ...

With Anna, I agree that my friends and I have left our boats unattended while we go diving under them. Nobody wants to be stuck in a rocking boat on the surface when instead they could be scuba diving. This is simply reality. THAT is why we carry SMBs with us, in case the boat sinks while unattended, so we can at least complete our deco.

With Thal, I agree that using one's wing to move a heavy object is really unsafe, particularly with trimix.

With Rainer , I agree that running some cave line from your spool (always, always carry a spool) or your reel (if you brought your reel) would have been a good idea, rather than having an underwater wrestling match with your buddy/hubbie about where to place the hook.

With RJP , that the last team or diver does the retrieving/disconnecting.

Somebody has got to unhook and move the upline. Either a fresh D/M from the boat, or else last team back. And if you see other divers behind you on the boat, then you should know that you are not the last team back. But I would not move it too far, only about 3 to 5 feet, vis and current permitting.

Catherine, I think you have an easy life, if all your wrecks are moored!

 

[tedj01]

TS&M,

I appreciate your willingness to share your mistakes with others. It shows a strength of character.

I am sorry if tone before was too critical and if again here. It certainly not my intent. I am almost always guilty of being too direct. I just felt a problem had occurred that was being overlooked. And felt it was serious enough that needed to be addressed.

One of the problems in all forums it is easy to jump at a problem and start throwing rocks without enough information. I may have done this here. I try hard to avoid throwing rocks at others and wish I were more successful in practice.

Again please accept my apologies.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

This is cruel, DD, and uncalled for. What ax are you grinding? Anti-DIR? Go into the DIR forum and pick on guys there who are as big as you are, or bigger.

Solo & narcosis on air at 200 ft. Are you kidding me?? Of course you are not going to find the upline. Odds are you won't even remember your own name, nor where you even are.

Odds are also that whoever pulled the hook before you forgot anyone else was even in the water.

I don't think it was cruel, but maybe uncalled for. I make no claims to be the smartest tool in the shed and to support this contention I described similar mistakes my buddies and I have made in the past under more dangerous conditions. And no, the situation I found myself in was real (not kidding).

I think it is great that they shared the situation in a public forum.

It honestly (really now) surprised me that someone who is so pro DIR would mis the big picture and fail to plan appropriately in this particular case. I wonder if there is a DIR way to pull hooks etc.? They seem to have some aspects of diving, which are of seemingly minor importance, spelled out into excrutiating rigorous details, yet in this one particular case there was no DIR protocol to follow?

I don't have an axe to grind, but from my perspective, not having a good dive plan (as very well exemplified in this situation) is a much bigger deal than someone choosing to dive to 135 feet on air.

 

[TSandM]

It's a DIR thing to do good, thorough dive planning, which we obviously didn't do very well. It's a DIR thing to have three competent team members, all of whom are using their brains, and any one of whom is capable of pointing out when an error is being made. None of the three of us did that.

There's nothing in my GUE classes that addressed how you handle shotting a wreck, or handling a grapnel or anchor, or even how you manage an upline that has to be removed when you are diving multiple teams. I think those are things you generally learn from people with experience with them, or from experience yourself. I took a wreck diving workshop last fall that talked about some things, but not this one. But it really wasn't that complicated an issue. We just failed to think it through before we got in the water.

Good point about not lifting with the wing. I probably would have done just what Peter did.

 

[Cacia]

And both terms, grapple and grapnel are the same?

Grapple (tool), a tool for grasping, hooking, and pulling objects