paulthenurse
Contributor
Running a line from the mooring is always a good idea. Even if the vis is good when your dive starts thats no garauntee that it's going to stay that way. Plus, if you start out at the downline and run a line, you are assured that when you get back to what is now the upline, you are on the right one. There are often multilple moorings on the Poling. Best case scenario is you end up looking silly coming up under the wrong boat. What would you do if you got to 60 FSW on a ghost line and it ended?STOGEY:
I would strongly suggest you get a reel and a bag and practice using them. Practice in shallow water. Practice a lot. It sounds easy; reach back, grab the bag, pull it free, attach your reel, make DAMNED GOOD AND SURE that you have the brake free, inflate the bag (which reg are you going to use, your primary or your backup?) and make sure nothing fouls the reel. What are you going to do then, tie off the line, cut the line at the reel and follow the line up to the surface or do a free ascent, holding onto the reel and taking in slack as you go?
Like I said, it sounds easy. It isn't. My buddy JohnL described a friend of his who messed up a step while practicing deploying a bag from 30 feet as "shooting to the surface like a Polaris Missile." Trying to do it for the first time at 90 fsw, lost on the deck of the Poling is an invitation to an embolism. Trying to do it when you realised that the upline you've followed ends abruptly 60 feet from the surface...
Just because the Poling is a half mile outside of the breakwater and some charter boats go there 5-6 times a week is no reason to get complacent and underestimate it. It's cold and dark and deep there. Visability... well, it's New England, need we say more? Diving it on an AL 80 leaves very little room for error. I get narced there if I'm on 21%. When I get narced I get real tunnel vision. Maybe that's what happened to you, focusing on taking pictures instead of the bigger picture of, "Ok, now how do I get home?"
One other thing. Because Fran says he routinely has to rescue divers from their own stupidity doesn't mean he likes it. I was with him earlier this spring when a diver popped to the surface 200 yards away, thrashing wildly. He'd done a free descent like you, didn't land on the boat and ended up searching for the wreck until he got low on air. He headed to the surface, panicked, dumped his weights and shot to the top. I was climbing back onboard at the time and saw Frans face go white as he hustled to get everyone aboard so he could go rescue one of his passengers. Believe me, he doesn't like it. He's a conscientious captain and a good man and feels responsible for the people on his boat. He's too much of a gentleman to say anything. Don't put him in that position.
The best way to avoid a life threatening situation is to think thru, in advance, what you are going to do if such and such a situation arises. The next best way to avoid a life threatening situation is have an open, non-accusatory discussion of what happened to someone else in the hope that you can learn from their mistakes. I hope that's what we're doing here. I don't think anyone here is trying to crucify you. But given the cavalier way you are describing what happened makes many of us question if you even understand how much trouble you were in.
Paulthenurse
(Edited for punctuation)
