Not a major near-miss, but one perhaps worth mentioning:
I was doing my Cavern cert checkout dives a couple weekends ago in Paradise Spring, just south of Ocala. Present were myself, one other cavern student, and our instructor. There were a couple other divers in the cavern when we first arrived, but they were out by the time we went in, and we had the cavern to ourselves the rest of the day.
These were our last checkout dives, so we were putting all our training together, lots of line management of course. To simulate bad-vis siltout situations, we were doing some return runs with our masks off. Pretty effective, can't focus on much of anything. Typically we would hand our masks to the instructor and perform the drill as discussed, alternating which of the two of us were leading.
On one of the "worst case" drills - masks off, air sharing with buddy to simulate an OOA, no lights - I was leading on the return. Things were going pretty well, buddy and I communicating during the ascent via arm pulls and so on. But shortly before I got to the secondary tie-off, my instructor suddenly grabbed my shoulder and stopped me.
At first I thought he did that just because we were basically done with the drill, but after he handed my mask back, and it was donned and cleared, he pointed out why he stopped me: if I had proceeded just another couple of feet along the line in that mask-off situation, I would have impaled my eyeball on a short but very pointy root jutting out from the ground just to one side and down the line a bit from my tie-off!
We were moving along at a decent pace, and I have no doubt I would have done serious damage to my face or eye if I hadn't been stopped. Even with a mask on, it could have really hurt.
So, this was not a major incident, however I am extremely thankful I had an observant instructor paying close attention! And I suppose a lesson to be learned from this is to double-check the surroundings of your tie-offs, keeping in mind you might be approaching them under siltout conditions and unable to see simple hazards like that root.
We finished our dives without further incident. Paradise Spring really is beautiful, even for a reef-oriented diver like myself.
>*< Fritz
I was doing my Cavern cert checkout dives a couple weekends ago in Paradise Spring, just south of Ocala. Present were myself, one other cavern student, and our instructor. There were a couple other divers in the cavern when we first arrived, but they were out by the time we went in, and we had the cavern to ourselves the rest of the day.
These were our last checkout dives, so we were putting all our training together, lots of line management of course. To simulate bad-vis siltout situations, we were doing some return runs with our masks off. Pretty effective, can't focus on much of anything. Typically we would hand our masks to the instructor and perform the drill as discussed, alternating which of the two of us were leading.
On one of the "worst case" drills - masks off, air sharing with buddy to simulate an OOA, no lights - I was leading on the return. Things were going pretty well, buddy and I communicating during the ascent via arm pulls and so on. But shortly before I got to the secondary tie-off, my instructor suddenly grabbed my shoulder and stopped me.
At first I thought he did that just because we were basically done with the drill, but after he handed my mask back, and it was donned and cleared, he pointed out why he stopped me: if I had proceeded just another couple of feet along the line in that mask-off situation, I would have impaled my eyeball on a short but very pointy root jutting out from the ground just to one side and down the line a bit from my tie-off!
We were moving along at a decent pace, and I have no doubt I would have done serious damage to my face or eye if I hadn't been stopped. Even with a mask on, it could have really hurt.
So, this was not a major incident, however I am extremely thankful I had an observant instructor paying close attention! And I suppose a lesson to be learned from this is to double-check the surroundings of your tie-offs, keeping in mind you might be approaching them under siltout conditions and unable to see simple hazards like that root.
We finished our dives without further incident. Paradise Spring really is beautiful, even for a reef-oriented diver like myself.
>*< Fritz
