Free Flow at 56 Feet
- Thread starter vtxkev
- Start date
Please register or login
Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.
Benefits of registering include
- Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
- A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
- You can make this box go away
stevejaz
Contributor
For as few dives as you guys had, I think you did pretty much what would be expected.
A freeflow is an incredibly noisy, chaotic event, and it's scary -- you know the gas you need to live is escaping rapidly into the water (and it's really scary to know how fast that will empty a tank). Fear changes your breathing, and makes buoyancy control very difficult. And once you are light and headed upwards, things happen quickly -- if you were shallow (which it sounds as though you were) you have very little time to react.
When I did my GUE Fundamentals class, we had to practice air-sharing. Now, of course, we had done air sharing in our OW class, but there, we did it sitting on the bottom. In Fundies, they made us do it while hovering in the water column, and we had to maintain both our depth and our attitude in the water, AND our awareness of each other and other divers. It was amazingly hard. We all yoyoed all over the water column, landed on the bottom, kicked up silt, and forgot where our third buddy was. You guys were trying to execute a skill you really weren't well trained to do, and do it for the first time under stress. It was predictable that it wasn't going to go smoothly!
Lessons from this, I think: One, in cold water, freeflows are not uncommon, and you should have a plan for coping with them (and preferably, equipment that makes the issue less likely). Two, spending a little time at the beginning or end of each dive practicing emergency procedures pays off enormously in increased comfort when the skills are needed.
I don't think you need to sit down with your new buddy and discuss every possible mishap that could occur underwater before you dive. Plans for things where there are different protocols (like buddy separation) should be clarified, and you should know the location of your buddy's alternate air source, and how air-sharing will be conducted. But I don't think you need a specific, different plan for freeflow. Either you are shallow enough to breath off the freeflowing reg and ascend (something which is easy to say, but much harder to do, as you are doing the ascent in a huge cloud of very noisy bubbles that obscure your vision and make it hard to see your gauge), or at deeper depths, you are going to share air with your buddy and ascend. The problem with air-sharing is that the increased flow through the buddy's first stage with two divers breathing off it may be the very thing that triggers a free flow -- extremely cold water is one of the few places where having a completely independent air source (doubles or a pony) really makes sense on recreational dives.
At any rate, you guys came through this okay, even though it wasn't ideal, and you got a great deal of food for thought.
(BTW, just for fun, HERE is my account of my first free flow.)
A freeflow is an incredibly noisy, chaotic event, and it's scary -- you know the gas you need to live is escaping rapidly into the water (and it's really scary to know how fast that will empty a tank). Fear changes your breathing, and makes buoyancy control very difficult. And once you are light and headed upwards, things happen quickly -- if you were shallow (which it sounds as though you were) you have very little time to react.
When I did my GUE Fundamentals class, we had to practice air-sharing. Now, of course, we had done air sharing in our OW class, but there, we did it sitting on the bottom. In Fundies, they made us do it while hovering in the water column, and we had to maintain both our depth and our attitude in the water, AND our awareness of each other and other divers. It was amazingly hard. We all yoyoed all over the water column, landed on the bottom, kicked up silt, and forgot where our third buddy was. You guys were trying to execute a skill you really weren't well trained to do, and do it for the first time under stress. It was predictable that it wasn't going to go smoothly!
Lessons from this, I think: One, in cold water, freeflows are not uncommon, and you should have a plan for coping with them (and preferably, equipment that makes the issue less likely). Two, spending a little time at the beginning or end of each dive practicing emergency procedures pays off enormously in increased comfort when the skills are needed.
I don't think you need to sit down with your new buddy and discuss every possible mishap that could occur underwater before you dive. Plans for things where there are different protocols (like buddy separation) should be clarified, and you should know the location of your buddy's alternate air source, and how air-sharing will be conducted. But I don't think you need a specific, different plan for freeflow. Either you are shallow enough to breath off the freeflowing reg and ascend (something which is easy to say, but much harder to do, as you are doing the ascent in a huge cloud of very noisy bubbles that obscure your vision and make it hard to see your gauge), or at deeper depths, you are going to share air with your buddy and ascend. The problem with air-sharing is that the increased flow through the buddy's first stage with two divers breathing off it may be the very thing that triggers a free flow -- extremely cold water is one of the few places where having a completely independent air source (doubles or a pony) really makes sense on recreational dives.
At any rate, you guys came through this okay, even though it wasn't ideal, and you got a great deal of food for thought.
(BTW, just for fun, HERE is my account of my first free flow.)
Ayisha
Contributor
I think that reading the OP's experience really brings to light the fact that when we learn and practice freeflows in O/W class and certifying dives, most of us are probably not explicitly taught to vent our BC and control buoyancy while managing the freeflow. While practicing freeflows in our early experiences, we are probably kneeling on the bottom or swimming horizontally, rather than task-loading it with dealing with an ascent and an emptying more buoyant tank. We of course know that venting and controlling the ascent is necessary, but we may not have practiced this aspect of managing a freeflow until it is a reality, if ever.
Having an environmentally sealed reg is a necessity for diving extremely cold water, and choosing a reg that is known to perform at depth in those temperatures is well advised.
Cold water dives require a chat with your buddy about freeflow procedures, so that both of you have the same expectations of what will be happening should a freeflow occur. Buddy contact and buddy/situational awareness is even more paramount in very cold, low viz dives and needs to be discussed as well.
Experienced mentors are a great idea as you build your skills and gain practice and experience. You handled it about as expected considering how new you are to the sport and the demanding conditions. This experience will certainly make you more aware of everything mentioned and help to strengthen your skills.
Having an environmentally sealed reg is a necessity for diving extremely cold water, and choosing a reg that is known to perform at depth in those temperatures is well advised.
Cold water dives require a chat with your buddy about freeflow procedures, so that both of you have the same expectations of what will be happening should a freeflow occur. Buddy contact and buddy/situational awareness is even more paramount in very cold, low viz dives and needs to be discussed as well.
Experienced mentors are a great idea as you build your skills and gain practice and experience. You handled it about as expected considering how new you are to the sport and the demanding conditions. This experience will certainly make you more aware of everything mentioned and help to strengthen your skills.
Similar threads
