Experienced diver analysis requested

[bisonduquebec]

Well, what a story.... As expected in these situations, when one thing goes wrong, more problems are coming your way...

You did stay calm and that is a bonus point.

BUT (take these critics as proposals from an experience diver)
1- Take a course on dry suit. Getting air in the legs and popping feet first should never happen
2- In case of BC failure, you CAN use you dry suit - but you must master it
3- That was a lot of new equipment to test. I recommend a pool for any new or modified equipment.
4- The failure you mentionned are incredible. If it was used equipment, you MUST have it checked before diving with it. It it was new, that to your dive shop. something is terribly wrong with the problem you got. In fact, I must had and saw all possible problems and never heard of a BC hose declamping or a loose reg. I guess I will add these check to my check list.
5- A test dive should be limited to 30feet max - with hard bottom at 30feet in case you have a problem. Nothing prevents you from doing some tests for 10 minutes and then completing your dive for pleasure. Any problem and abort the dive right away. There is always time to fix it out of the water and go back in afterward.
6- In most cases, don't try to fix equipment during the dive. Fixing will take a lot of time and a lot of air - It is also very unlikely that you will be able to fix it.
7- Don't follow your buddy. Buddy diving means side by side, not one following the other. Following means that you are helping your buddy but in now way he can help you.
8- Trick: You could have blown some air in the tube and pitching it to prevent the air going out - but this requires a high level of diving experience and very good knowledge of your equipment

You learned from this dive like no other could and that is great knowledge. Some also died for the same reasons. Lets be carefull out there.

 

[cdtgray]

When an emergency arises, I like to approach it from the standpoint of dealing with the most immediate danger first in order to provide more time to think through the problem and generate a fix if possible. Often people will focus on the source of the problem and not take a step back and look at the bigger picture.

In your case the most immediate danger was your uncontrolled descent, not the malfunctioning inflator. You should have made sure first to arrest the descent either by swimming against it, using your drysuit, or using a lift bag/smb. Once you stop the descent and regain your neutral bouyancy, you have bought yourself time. Then you can decide if you want to try and repair the inflator and continue the dive or call it off.

 

[Rick Inman]

A few things occurred to me:

1) you're calm under pressure. That's a very good sign and something to be proud of.

2) if you have an equipement problem you should abort the dive.

3) you're most likely grossly overweighted.

R..

My thoughts. exactly. And then:

4) You came to ScubaBoard and more experienced divers for critical analysis to gain perspective and improve.

Perfect!

 

[JustinF]

DameDykker, TeddyDiver

Equiptment was all new.

I am capable of maintaining a head up position, and I know how to curl & roll to get out of a feet up position. I didn't though, as I wanted to maintain bouyancy.

I am wearing 26lbs of lead, based on a buoyancy check that is how much I needed plus 5 to account for an empty tank.

I am 5'11' about 160lbs in a DS, saltwater.

Trim is an issue. I have a weight harness that goes over your shoulders, but the weight slips around in the pockets, and when you lean forward the whole thing pitches and slides towards your head, making you head go down, fast.

LP hose seems ok, the whole thing is going to the shop today.

Tassie Rohan,

It's not the inflator hose from the reg first stage that came off (We did the classic PADI BWRAF buddy check) but the corrugated hose itself.

See above for weight.

2 socks, GREAT idea, my DS is baggy enough as it is. that will help keep air from my feet.


Charlie99,

I wanted to change as few things as possible, and I was already in a feet up oposition but stablized, so I wanted to fix the issue asap. I guess at that point I could have just rolled over, but I was comfortable enough in that position and my thoughts were on the inflator assembly.

It wasn't really that I was reluctant to call the dive, the thought never crossed my mind. Why, I'm not sure.

CD in Chitown,

See above for correct equiptment failure, and why I didn't go head up.

Diver0001,

Thank you, I have 26lbs on, which I believe is calibrated correctly. My next dives will be with an instructer on AOW, so maybe they can correct any weight problems as one of my dives is Peak performance bouyancy.

coolhardware52,

It was not the lp hose that came off, but the corrugated hose that lead from the inflator assembly to the bladder itself.

My wing is a Oxycheq SS bp, not pull dump, straight elbow.

bisonduquebec,

I will take a course on a DS, to perfect it. I know how to get out of feet first, see above for more.

Equiptment was all new, test dives over shallow hard bottom were complete, this was first pleasure dive in new gear.

I will try swimming beside next time, so far my instruction it's always been following.

cdtgray,

The first concern was the descent, which is why I put it down on the sandy bottom before anything else.

Thank you all for your input. I appreciate your ideas and opinions and will work out the gear issues at the LDS today.

 

[CD_in_Chitown]

I will take a course on a DS, to perfect it....

Nothing will perfect it but time underwater. You said you wore the d/s in o/w class didn't you? I'd bet your instructor has imparted all of the drysuit wisdom that s/he has into you already to get you through your checkout dives without corking.

I will try swimming beside next time, so far my instruction it's always been following.

Following is ok but its hard to find a good safe leader, some people think its a personal preference kind of thing.

The first concern was the descent, which is why I put it down on the sandy bottom before anything else.

I think you are misunderstanding, when you

... thought I would just hit the deck & fix it

is when you should have added weight to your drysuit and became neutral.

Although I am not certain that I could add air to my suit while feet up. Kind of like patting your head and rubbing your belly at the same time, just a big mental block there. Probably from the d/s class I once took

Now that I have re-read everything and correctly understand the equipment failure I have to say you're either one cool hand, or you're putting us on. Fixing the issue and continuing the dive? Who among us had the wherewithal on dive 6 to do this? Count me impressed. I think other than continuing the dive it was textbook handling of an incident, a point I think you had it driven home when you found yourself ooa. Bad things happen in threes man, get outta the water before the other shoe falls.
Seriously though, after fighting with equipment like that I would have been ready to call it a day until someone checked it out.

As for that corrugated hose, I had that happen to me one time when I forgot to tighten the zip-tie on my new mouthpiece. Talk about a reminder with a capital R to always tighten those up with pliers. Whoever sold you that wing should have done that for you though, IMHO. Unless, of course, you bought it online and then its only par for the course when you buy without service.

 

[JustinF]

Yes OW was done in a DS, so corking is not a problem, I have not had a uncontroled ascent since we were shown how to get out of one, I think that was dive 3 or 4.

I think in a perfect situation I should have not descended. I should have maintained neutral bouyancy in a head up position and corrected my problem.

However, I don't have my trim set good enough to stay perfectly still without moving. Since my trim is head heavy, and I added all the air to my suit to make up for the loss in the BCD, that put me at a very feet up position. I could have stayed feet up hanging in the water and corrected the problem(this is how I did it the second time) but it seemed to make sense to settle on a surface so I could twist around and get at the hose to see how it all went together.

I am not sure if it's better to get to a static surface to work on the problem or attempt to maintain neutral bouyancy while I try to fix it. I don't think I have the skill for that yet. One of the many reasons I wanted to ask here.

Putting you on?, no I have much better things to do with my time, as I am sure all of you do as well. If you want to ask my buddy, he is Jason McK here on SB. Click here to send him a PM, maybe he saw things differently then me?

I think the ziptie was not pulled tight enough. I bought all my gear at a LDS, but I guess that is not something that they assemble perhaps.

Thanks your your compliments & criticism, I appreciate them both.

 

[Jason McK]

Thought I'd chime in here instead of getting PMs.
I feel quite bad because of my lack of good buddy skills. But will concur with Justins accurate account of what happened.

After finding him on his back with his inflater separated from the intake line of the BC. I stayed with him until he was able to reconnect it. It appear to me that is was a snug fit and didn't think it would pose a problem once he surfaced.
My thought was as he surfaced the act of releasing the pressure from BC would reduce the chance of it coming off again.... I was wrong.
I watch Justin easily get out of the feet up position on the bottom so I thought he wanted to be in that position for stability and ease of working on his BC.

My Bad, next time I will be more proactive in helping my buddy

Jason

 

[JustinF]

I don't think any part of what you did was wrong. On the bottom I did want to be on my back, but I'm not sure why, and I guess it was wrong to do so.

Maintaining neutral bouyancy was the correct thing to do I guess.

Were both fairly new and neither of us identified the possible consequences of the situation.

I just read through accident report after accident report and realized no one really knows exactly what happened as one cannot ask the victim, I was just wondering if a seemingly small situation like ours could get out of control with a wrong decision and end up much much worse.

Far more experianced divers then me have been lost in settings very familiar to them, I just don't know what could have cost them thier life.

Wondering if something small created something larger after a bad decision.

I was wondering if in our inexperiance we simply failed to identify the severity of the situation (if it was severe at all) and if we acted appropriately, or totally the opposite.

Not sure if I was lucky or that was routine....

Know what I mean?

 

[annie]

Again, congratulations for remaining calm. Don't interpret any of the below comments as a telling off, I think you did great for a beginner.

I agree with the other posters that your uncontrolled descent was the immediate danger and it's already been said that the first action should have been to remain neutral. That's been covered.

I want to point out something else and if I'm totally wrong I'm sure I'll be corrected.

>>To summarize, I am upside down, feet up & out of the water with legs like the Pillsbury dough boy, BCD is full of water & won’t hold air, I can’t see out of my left eye, I am out of air, and still don’t have the inflator hose in. <<

I think this was dangerous. Firstly, you ran out of air while still with your head in the water. No matter how you look at it that is a situation to be avoided. If you were being conservative, a little free flow on the way up should not drain your tank. I've looked at the air numbers you've given. You turned around at 1200PSI. When I convert to Bar (what I use) that's around 80 bar. A bit low really! Conversion chart is at http://www.britishmetrics.com/html/pis-bar.htm. I usually turn around at 100 bar (1460 bar), and start my ascent on 70 bar to be at the surface with 50 bar which is 720 PSI. The purpose of this is to allow for emergencies, yours or your buddy's. How much air did you have on beginning your ascent?

If you were out of air and upside down, what were you breathing from? Supposing you hadn't managed to connect your BCD and therefore not been able to flip over? I've never been in this situation but I imagine it might be tough to get head up again with fins in the air. In case of having difficulties flipping over, did your buddy have enough air reserved to share with you?

Maybe you should have some ground rules about air management to ensure some reserves for this sort of thing. Surely your buddy should have been on standby with his octopus and ready to help get your head out of the water, instead of laughing his *** off. The surface can be a dangerous place for someone out of air, and with a dodgy BC. The fact that you were bouyant with your suit doesn't count as that wasn't keeping your head out of the water.

It also underlines that you should have called the dive once things started to go wrong, as you ended up with 2 equipment errors which I think are a bad combination. If you had been wearing a wetsuit you might have had to drop your weights on the surface to be bouyant (assuming you couldn't manually inflate your BCD).

 

[Charlie99]

...., I was just wondering if a seemingly small situation like ours could get out of control with a wrong decision and end up much much worse.

......... Wondering if something small created something larger after a bad decision.

In many accidents, whether scuba diving, aircraft, boating, or whatever; it starts off with something small and then escalates. Sometimes all the attention gets focussed on fixing one problem, and something else bad happens.

It wasn't really that I was reluctant to call the dive, the thought never crossed my mind. Why, I'm not sure.

Add in a bit of narcosis, and it's even less likely that you could make a good decision.

In a strange fashion, aborting a dive is analogous to backing off and starting over on some plumbing or car repair job. Many times when trying to fix something I've gotten to the point where I'm breaking more things than I'm fixing. To fix part A, I have to pull out parts B and C and in the process break something else. Fixing that leads to another problem, etc. It takes a lot of self control for me to just walk away from the whole mess and come back the next day. Most of the time, it makes a lot more sense and is lot easier the next day.

I try to keep these sorts of experiences in mind, try to consciously keep in mind that at some point it's best to just bail out on a dive and do a simple and safe abort rather than getting deeper and deeper into trouble.

OK. Time to jump down off the