Ft. Lauderdale 11/12 The Sea Empress AOW

[Jim Lapenta]

Agree with Mark here. Experience is the key here and knowing when to call it. The book as he says does specify conditions as to when you probably should not go for it. But I believe that Vayu is not taking the PADI class. His profile lists NAUI as the cert agency and having not seen their material I can't comment on it. I would think that there would be similar admonishments tho. As for the thing that this is his class and grade I'm sure there are some lawyers out there that would love to look at this schools curriculum where they are possibly putting lives and safety at risk. No grade is worth your health, safety, or life. But then again this is something that can only be learned by experience and gaining maturity.

 

[Diver0001]

I chose to enter the water on that night. Despite several warning signs I failed to recognize a situation that would slowly turn for the worse. The first of these signs occurred when the charter boat sped through the inter-coastal waterway (I believe there is a no wake zone in these areas due to their association with manatees). At sea, we were reminded of the last minute change of our dive plan. .

....snip....

That's a very sloppy bit of diving by all involved. There appears to have been a complete lack of effective communication, which looks to me like the root cause of most of the other problems.

More interesting in this than laying blame is to try understanding why communication was breaking down and discuss how to improve that in the future.

Your chest pains are not normal and I don't see an obvious link between events during this dive and the chest pains. You need to stop diving until your doctor clears you to continue.

R..

 

[markfm]

My error -- thought I'd seen PADI pop up in there earlier.

 

[Tom Winters]

Well, "AOW" is a PADI acronym for the course which follows "Open Water"; NAUI calls its version "Advanced Scuba" which follows "Scuba Diver". Kinda splitting hairs here. Both agencies recognize one another's basic course as meeting the prerequisite for the advanced course. Hard to tell if "Flame On!" belongs to the Fantastic Four or The Scuba Board.

 

[fishnchips]

Good to see you recover fast to tell the story. The condition was definitely not a good one, even for day trip, not to mention night dive. The instructors should have called the dive.

While the instructors were responsible for conducting AOW in condition not suitable for class, you are a certified diver, you should call your own dive. Scuba diving is not for everyone, especially night diving. People freak out, experience claustrophobia, uncontrolled hyperventilation, vertigo…. All these contribute to high consumption of air, which seems to be in this case. The reg is design for normal breathing, your chest muscle will over work to try to hyperventilate through your reg and may contribute to chest pain. 30 min continual hyperventilate trying to suck more air out of a reg will probably contribute to sore chest muscle for a few days.

The condition of the sea seemed to keep the instructors busy and did not attend to your needs. Many instructors, DM/guides nowadays have less than 150 dives experience. Not to mention having experience dealing in challenging situation. You, therefore, should hold yourself responsible to your own safety. If you learned it is important to plan your dive then dive your plan, then follow it. If you learn it is important to call a dive when condition is beyond your skill/comfort zone, then do it. No one know you/your skills better than you do.

While it was not a good experience, I hope you will find some courage to continue this sport and enjoy its many reward. Safe diving.

 

[BikerManiac]

Amen to that

Good to see you recover fast to tell the story. The condition was definitely not a good one, even for day trip, not to mention night dive. The instructors should have called the dive.

While the instructors were responsible for conducting AOW in condition not suitable for class, you are a certified diver, you should call your own dive. Scuba diving is not for everyone, especially night diving. People freak out, experience claustrophobia, uncontrolled hyperventilation, vertigo…. All these contribute to high consumption of air, which seems to be in this case. The reg is design for normal breathing, your chest muscle will over work to try to hyperventilate through your reg and may contribute to chest pain. 30 min continual hyperventilate trying to suck more air out of a reg will probably contribute to sore chest muscle for a few days.

The condition of the sea seemed to keep the instructors busy and did not attend to your needs. Many instructors, DM/guides nowadays have less than 150 dives experience. Not to mention having experience dealing in challenging situation. You, therefore, should hold yourself responsible to your own safety. If you learned it is important to plan your dive then dive your plan, then follow it. If you learn it is important to call a dive when condition is beyond your skill/comfort zone, then do it. No one know you/your skills better than you do.

While it was not a good experience, I hope you will find some courage to continue this sport and enjoy its many reward. Safe diving.

 

[Vayu]

Just a few clarifications: The dive plan was to 'turn around' as a group to the ascent line when the first person hit 1800. Since my buddy and I stepped up to the plate for this we signalled appropriately and everyone changed direction. I'm not sure if this was a navigation error or an attempt to extend bottom time, but it became obvious as time passed that we were still below seventy feet. We notified instructors again and they kept pointing the direction we were swimming so I was looking and hoping to see the ascent line soon. This did not happen and soon there was no wreck at all. An error like this was probably very easy to make. Compasses are magnetically guided and unfortunately metal wrecks can make it a bit difficult to use them effectively. We did a skindive earlier on lauderdale by the sea and the instructors could not use the schools compasses in GOOD conditions. I have a Suunto SK70 and I should have been navigating... lesson learned.

Because we thought we were heading to the boat my buddy and I still thought we were on plan. When we realized we were off plan, we did not have enough gas to ascend alone. Instead of ascending as a group, the leaders of the dive swam very hard back to where they thought the wreck was. We swam hard to catch up and luckily hit the wreck and ascended as a group.

I see panic come up alot in this thread and I must assure you again if I had panicked I would not be here to type this. When I noticed things were not going the way I liked, I put a mental check on myself and tried to breathe calmly. I ascended with good trim while monitoring my depth gauge, watch, and SPG. I'm not an accountant but my SPG has similar functions and at the safety stop I was "In the red". Although things were disorganized, we have had good training and I think it is something that we were able to keep a good stop without an ascent line or any visual reference and still take care of the emergencies.

My buddy may have needed the group for air and this is another reason I was happy we stayed in formation. An additional mistake was made when I entered roman handshake with an instructor I have not trained with. If you read my original post you will see I was not aware of the ascent from 20' - 15' to sea level. I do not know if I developed a pulmonary barotrauma as a result but I will find out tuesday. Regardless, I am not sure if the roman handshake is an answer to out of air situations. See the DIR guys with the seven foot hoses? They have them for a reason. The romans were dangerous.

At the surface I had little time and instead of panicking spent that time orally inflating my bcd, letting people know I may be injured, and jamming the snorkel in my mouth. Snorkels save lives. So does swim training. I was happy that my gear selections proved to be good ones and my equipment helped me get through this. I must give proper credit to my jetfins for making it relatively easy to swim when I needed to. One thing however did trouble me... Whenever I attempted to rotate the dial on my Scubapro S600 from the "open" position to a more conservative position, it began wheezing. Because of this I left it completely open and this may have contributed to a slightly greater rate of consumption.

We did not swim all the way back to the boat but we did swim for a long time. I have learned that even if we had signalled the boat it would not have been able to come immediately. As said before two additional divers were injured on the boat. I do not know the exact details (in fact, neither do the divers involved) but they made an uncontrolled ascent from 60' to sea level in approximately 15 seconds. Because all of us are young and in shape, less serious consequences have been imposed on us for entering the water in the first place.

My primary concern last weekend was that once the instructors knew there was a possible injured diver nothing was done about it. Even on the boat they went to take care of their gear instead of helping with the 02 or notifying anyone that anything was wrong. I have since spoken with the director and according to DM's that were trying to deal with the boats 02, it did not have a proper mouthpiece installed and was missing some sort of valve. I feel pretty lucky that I was able to sit calmly and watch for a period of time without having much more to worry about.

According to the trauma center ER, my chest pain is not a result of my heart. It is interesting to note however that my leg WAS convulsing and I did have a very irregular heartbeat when an EKG was done on the ambulance. In addition to this I had developed numbness and this numbness has been addressed with a brain MRI which I will review on tuesday.

I do not know what other issues I might be dealing with if my body was not able to achieve homeostasis within a couple hours of recieving oxygen. Was it DCS? probably not... I don't know and neither does anyone else. Did I embolize? I guess I will find out when and if the xrays indicate that mechanical damage has or has not been done to my lungs. Although we ended up diving a profile of 80ft for 25 minutes I'm pretty sure this was scrambled up a bit by overexertion. Unfortunately there is not many ways to diagnose diving injuries as they are happening or even after unless there is substantial mechanical damage. A few alveoli bursting and bubbling me up would not even show on the xray - we are looking for large areas of damage and I do not believe we will find them.

IMHO, I handled myself pretty well AFTER I made the mistake of getting in the water. I may have had a good deal of C02 buildup or even, as DAN suggests, temporary hypoxia at depth. The doctors do not agree that I was hypoxemic and for my part I have no capability to self diagnose.

As I said previously, things can change pretty quickly. One second you are OK and the next you are riding a really lucky wave over a plethora of things that could have got the better of you.

I'm not saying I am experienced enough to dive these conditions, but I am good enough in the water to get myself OUT of them. Again I hope you never find yourself in a similar situation. Dive often and dive safely. That is my goal and will continue to be.

Word to your mother.

-V

 

[vondo]

Reading your last post changes my impression of what happened from reading the first post w.r.t. directions and air.

Is this correct:

1. You enter the water on a descent line to the wreck with about 3000 psi
2. You swim along the wreck (presumably against the current) for 12 minutes or so.
3. When you get to 1800 psi, you signal the instructor and everyone reverses direction (now swimming with the current)
4. The group swims too far, past the ascent line
5. You all turn around and swim into the current again, presumably trying to find the ascent line
6. At 1200 psi you signal to the instructor that you want to go up
7. At 1000 psi you show the instructor your gauge and the group begins to go up
8. You arrive at your safety stop with about 700 psi
9. At 200 psi you start buddy breathing with an instructor (we assume your buddy was similarly low on air)

When I've dove wrecks in FLL, what they mean by "turn around" is not "end the dive" but "head back for the ascent line." That point is usually at 1500 psi or so (since on the way out you are often into the current and swimming back and forth on the wreck).

Sorry, just confused as to the timeline.

 

[riguerin]

Just a few clarifications: The dive plan was to 'turn around' as a group to the ascent line when the first person hit 1800.
-V

Vayu,

I would like to begin by stating that I'm very glad that you are OK. Posting your adverse experiences serves as a valuable tool for all to learn from. I applaud your courage. However, doing so exposes you to criticism. So long as it remains in the spirit of constructive criticism, it is healthy. All benefit from it. This is probability one of the single biggest values provided by this site.

Similar to you, I began my diving carrier in SE FL. After a couple years, and a few 100 dives, I eventually obtained my DM cert and worked professionally in the area for many subsequent years. I've read both posts regarding this incident , and have a few problems reconciling some of the details the account.

This one, especially, does not seem to make sense to me. Did the DM/Instructor say to you "let me know when you hit 1800 psi" or did he say "we will ALL surface when the first person hits 1800 psi" ? The former seems like a very typical mid-dive check point, while the later would make for a very short dive for all. From a heuristics perspective, the actual dive that appears to have been executed (~70ft for 25min .. or 1st to hit 1000 psi) seems very reasonable ... while" surface at 1800psi" does not. Can you please confirm with your dive leads ?

 

[Ayisha]

the first person to hit 1800 would notify instructors and the group (now a team instead of true buddy pairs) would ascend as one.

Ok, so now it makes sense. The plan was NOT to ascend at 1800 psi as stated in Vayu's first post. It was to TURNAROUND at 1800 psi as Vayu stated in his last post.

Those terms are completely different.

So it seems they did attempt to turnaround, but got lost, possibly because of faulty compass headings. Like you, they may have thought they were going to get to the line any second. When you all got blown off the wreck, then they ascended, and looked for the boat.

In my night course, I remember that we used a couple of types of u/w navigation techniques. Perhaps on steel wrecks, it might be prudent to rely on methods other than compasses, like formations you see, moonlight, landmarks, parts of the ship, following a wall, etc. It's always important to have situational awareness and pay attention to where your correct line is in relation to other things you see, whether it be day or night.

Don't always trust your compass or someone else. Beware of anything that would interfere with a compass heading, like a big steel ship. Use multiple forms of navigation and always be aware.