PfcAJ
Contributor
So what's the condition again that would result in 2 divers out of gas and unable to share the longhose? Forget that. 2 divers out of gas PERIOD?
Rule number 1.
Rule number 1.
Hose lengths
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From a "buddy breathing" standpoint there's little/no appreciable difference between a 22" hose and a 24" hose and a 26" hose and a 28" hose. The 28" hose probably does give you more room to work in a buddy breathing situations, but on doubles the need to buddy breath from it assumes that two divers simultaneously had catastrophic failures on THREE OTHER REGS leading to the need to buddy breath off that ONE.
One training agency I know will throw failures at students until you have to bring a team of three up on two posts. But it's really a LHOTP (Little House on the Prairie -- everything that can go wrong, does) scenario and not in any way a reflection of what can or should happen on an actual, non-training dive.
You can always come up with a scenario that's worse than what you've arranged will cover, and if you do that to its (illogical) conclusion, you'll end up decked with spare everything, defeating the purpose of simple, clean, streamlined and standardized. Planning for one major failure has always seemed reasonable to me, but of course, that requires that everyone involved handle that major failure promptly and effectively, so it doesn't snowball into more. People I dive with, I'm willing to take that risk
You can always come up with a scenario that's worse than what you've arranged will cover, and if you do that to its (illogical) conclusion, you'll end up decked with spare everything, defeating the purpose of simple, clean, streamlined and standardized. Planning for one major failure has always seemed reasonable to me, but of course, that requires that everyone involved handle that major failure promptly and effectively, so it doesn't snowball into more. People I dive with, I'm willing to take that risk
You've never deployed it and found that it wants to curl into loops?
I got rid of it because it was an annoyance, and having lent it to 2 students recently they both have had this issue. While it's no more than a slight annoyance for me, the students were new to diving. It certainly made hose deployment and stowing more awkward that necessary for them.
It's also retained a kink at the first stage end from maybe 40 dives in AL doubles where the routing was a bit tight. That was probably about 5 months ago.
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Personally, I want my necklace reg to be as flush to my neck as possible, with no extra hose to add drag or flop or other issues.
As to the 3 divers needing to share from one, such a catastrophic scenario in ocean would seem nearly impossible without the worst type of dive planning and skills...In the specific cave story we heard, there was clearly much more going on than the story as told by a "survivor" of a horrible clusterf@@*.
This story would actually need to be decanted at length, by someone like JJ or Andrew or Casey..or George ( though the George explanation could be more sensational than this forum could benefit from
Incidents such as the cave death described, led to the DIR rules that George inplemented, and strangely enough ( if you were believing Gavin and Lamar) , with the new DIR rules as mandatory, the frequent deaths which had been plagueing the cave community ENDED for WKPP divers. The personal preference ideas of Main and Sherwood, were bad for the environment they were in--as opposed the the DIR versions. Main was known to be a smart guy, with great skills ( I never met him--this is just what I remember from the time) but that he used to many conflicting ideas, created convolutions that did not enhance the team safety, and was always VERY FAR from DIR in approach to cave diving.
In regard to the comment in this thread about having enough regs for 3 divers....for all practical purposes, this should never be an issue. But each of us DOES actually have 3 working regs in our normal set up..if you passed off your necklace reg to the 2nd buddy, after giving your primary to the 1st buddy, you would still have your inflator for your wing you could breathe off of. With proper planning, this whole issue would not be possible. Also, 2 buddy's could share a long hose reg while the diver with gas left and donating, could continue to use his necklace reg. In the old days, we did have to pass a reg back and forth for air share. With a 7 foot hose, this is pretty damn easy. In a zero vis silt out perhaps this would be a tougher process( one would have to control breathing for both) , but part of DIR is making sure that none of this nonsense ever happened in the first place.
Regards,
DanV
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Found this followup on the story from George....as it was fairly "restrained" for George, I think it is worth adding to this thread, as it makes far more sense than the first version we read....
From: "George Irvine" <trey@myacc.net> | This is spam | Add to Address Book
To: "Quest@Gue. Com" <quest@gue.com>, "Techdiver@Aquanaut.Com" <techdiver@aquanaut.com>
Subject: Bill Gavin Senile?
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 19:07:08 -0400
Geez, I just read that novel Bill Gavin wrote trying to explain his CF's.
Obviously his buddy Bill Main went crying that Jarrod and I were not nice to
him. I know Bill Gavin a long time and did some 150 cave dives with him, and
while he always resented me and we did not really get along too well other
than underwater, I certainly never in my life expected to see this guy stray
so far from reality. His post is not only obviously a convolution of
ridiculous circular logic, but full of complete denial and lies. He has
clearly been so far removed from the actual diving that his memory of what
he did is completely gone.
I don't need to "set the record straight", and certainly do not need to
write a novel explaining my actions since I have nothing to explain and a
perfect record, but some of this stuff just has to be answered.
Bill chose to attack my instructions to my team as to how to handle
different situations. I have a set protocol, and Bill's arguments against it
fail to recognize how we really operate. In a nutshell, we dive our stages
to half plus and we dive multiple scooters and we place safeties. We do not
drag a bunch of partially full stages with us. We do not so we can discard
them in an emergency. Bill has this very confused, and Bill dove to thirds
on his backgas while using only one scooter. Bill did not like carrying
extra scooters and bottles. Jarrod and I have no problem with this, as
evidenced by our 5 scooter dives with "trains" of bottles that have been
executed in good time with no CFs to report, and certainly no dead buddies
to explain.
Bill says he and Lamar ( English, not Hires) and Sherwood did the dive
prior to Wood's death. I was on that dive with Lamar, Gavin and Sherwood - I
did the survey. Jarrod and I did the setup dive for the next dive which is
the one that killed Wood. Wood came to me and said "this is the last of
these dives that I am going to do". Wood had been drinking and using, he
told me, his roommate told me, and I told Gavin that we should not let Wood
dive. Gavin said," Sherwood has done almost as many of these dives as you
have, he deserves to go". I bailed out of the dive. Gavin is lying badly
about this - it was a four man dive originally. I told them to call me and
tell me "where they killed Sherwood". Lamar called me that night and said
"In the restriction". These guys are covering their asses.
After that dive, Gavin and Lamar did ONE more dive with me in Turner and
then two more dives in Wakulla ( Lamar sat out the first one and Sheck Exley
stepped in). On the Turner dive, we went 4400 feet, not 8000 feet. Again,
Gavin lying on number of dives and the distance. Jarrod, Casey and I have
since extended the Turner cave. The dive that Lamar and Gavin did with me in
Wakulla went 6500 feet. The longest deep dive Gavin did was the one where
Sherwood died. I know because I went back with Brent Scarabin and surveyed
the line Bill added. Basically, on a convoluted, ridiculous and massively
unsafe dive plan too ridiculous to recount, those three went about 9 grand
on one scooter each that had a full speed burn time of about 85 minutes (
more if turned back - the batteries are a lot better now). They did not have
enough scooter, enough gas, enough safeties, and they strung themselves out
like Bill always did, and they paid the ultimate price. Brent and I went in
with two big scooters each, plenty of gas, safeties, surveyed the entire
line and got out with full hundreds, and nobody even got cold, much less
killed. Gavin's efforts to badmouth my dive planning and methods are a laugh
considering his track record. But , resentment does funny things to people.
Sherwood surveyed about 800 feet of line , and it was all wrong. Those guys
put in a lot more, and my bet is that Sherwood was back there surveying all
by himself, just like these two used to do to me, and he got freaked and
spent the rest of the time trying to catch them and turn the dive. Diving
with those two was solo diving, and I held no illusions that either one of
them would help me for one second if things went wrong. That is a far cry
from my relationship with Jarrod in the water, or any DIR diver for that
matter.
Gavin feels he is being criticized for these people's deaths. He
complains about me saying Bill Main left his buddy McFadden, and then goes
on to explain that he ( Bill Gavin) was solo diving while Bill Main and Bill
McFadden were deep air diving, and goes on to criticize DIR and talk about
"hogarthian". Hello, Mom? If you have not read this, go see it to believe
it.
Gavin got warned on Sherwood. Gavin actually wised up after McFadden ( no
more air dives). By the way, I heard about the accident while taking my
cavern class - Bill and Bill are big on the time thing, and the truth is
they both should be embarrassed criticizing myself and Jarrod who took it
beyond their wildest dream in a fraction of the time. Bill thinks I am
blaming him for Parker's death. What I did was to discontinue the practices
that contributed to these situations. I do not let people dive teknas while
Bill dives a Gavin and the tekna fails. I do not let practicing alcoholics
and drug addicts do exploration dives, especially when they come to me and
tell me they have a problem. I do not do kamikaze stretch dives, although I
did with Gavin and learned the easy way not to do it thereafter.
Gavin criticizes me for not taking action on Parker. My account of the
story is called "My 77th Cave Dive". The two guys with me, Bill Main and
Lamar English, had 15 years of cave dives. Bill Main and I both thought a
scooter had run away to the ceiling and we went to the ceiling to retrieve
it ( the arm "flailing" that Lamar talks about). When the water cleared, we
saw the scooters sitting where we left them. Gavin accurately points out
that "grins" dives should not be done, and I do not allow them, and Gavin
should have pointed out that letting somebody with 77 cave dives take on
that kind of responsibility was stupid. I don't do that either today.
As Jim Cobb points out, these guys are trying to loose the guilt. I don't
care about their guilt or their feelings or anything else. If you listen to
guys like this ( who are long out of it and who are in denial), you don't
get a chance to learn valuable lessons. I learned them, I practice from
them, and I have the track record to prove it.
Gavin could not deal with the "politics" of access, as he said, he asked
me to deal with it, he then asked me to take the whole thing over and he
would go back to being the Engineer, and I did just that. I got access to
everything, and I put procedures in place at that time which still exist
today.
Anyway, I learned a lot from Bill Gavin that was good, and learned a lot
by example of what not to do. I never learned anything from Main but total
bull****. Lamar was a clever guy and I took what I could from him as well.
Then, Jarrod and I moved on. I have never resented anyone, and can't imagine
the feeling, but it must be powerful to get these guys off the bench after
ten years. I think is speaks a lot about the psychology of this sport.
__________________
From: "George Irvine" <trey@myacc.net> | This is spam | Add to Address Book
To: "Quest@Gue. Com" <quest@gue.com>, "Techdiver@Aquanaut.Com" <techdiver@aquanaut.com>
Subject: Bill Gavin Senile?
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 19:07:08 -0400
Geez, I just read that novel Bill Gavin wrote trying to explain his CF's.
Obviously his buddy Bill Main went crying that Jarrod and I were not nice to
him. I know Bill Gavin a long time and did some 150 cave dives with him, and
while he always resented me and we did not really get along too well other
than underwater, I certainly never in my life expected to see this guy stray
so far from reality. His post is not only obviously a convolution of
ridiculous circular logic, but full of complete denial and lies. He has
clearly been so far removed from the actual diving that his memory of what
he did is completely gone.
I don't need to "set the record straight", and certainly do not need to
write a novel explaining my actions since I have nothing to explain and a
perfect record, but some of this stuff just has to be answered.
Bill chose to attack my instructions to my team as to how to handle
different situations. I have a set protocol, and Bill's arguments against it
fail to recognize how we really operate. In a nutshell, we dive our stages
to half plus and we dive multiple scooters and we place safeties. We do not
drag a bunch of partially full stages with us. We do not so we can discard
them in an emergency. Bill has this very confused, and Bill dove to thirds
on his backgas while using only one scooter. Bill did not like carrying
extra scooters and bottles. Jarrod and I have no problem with this, as
evidenced by our 5 scooter dives with "trains" of bottles that have been
executed in good time with no CFs to report, and certainly no dead buddies
to explain.
Bill says he and Lamar ( English, not Hires) and Sherwood did the dive
prior to Wood's death. I was on that dive with Lamar, Gavin and Sherwood - I
did the survey. Jarrod and I did the setup dive for the next dive which is
the one that killed Wood. Wood came to me and said "this is the last of
these dives that I am going to do". Wood had been drinking and using, he
told me, his roommate told me, and I told Gavin that we should not let Wood
dive. Gavin said," Sherwood has done almost as many of these dives as you
have, he deserves to go". I bailed out of the dive. Gavin is lying badly
about this - it was a four man dive originally. I told them to call me and
tell me "where they killed Sherwood". Lamar called me that night and said
"In the restriction". These guys are covering their asses.
After that dive, Gavin and Lamar did ONE more dive with me in Turner and
then two more dives in Wakulla ( Lamar sat out the first one and Sheck Exley
stepped in). On the Turner dive, we went 4400 feet, not 8000 feet. Again,
Gavin lying on number of dives and the distance. Jarrod, Casey and I have
since extended the Turner cave. The dive that Lamar and Gavin did with me in
Wakulla went 6500 feet. The longest deep dive Gavin did was the one where
Sherwood died. I know because I went back with Brent Scarabin and surveyed
the line Bill added. Basically, on a convoluted, ridiculous and massively
unsafe dive plan too ridiculous to recount, those three went about 9 grand
on one scooter each that had a full speed burn time of about 85 minutes (
more if turned back - the batteries are a lot better now). They did not have
enough scooter, enough gas, enough safeties, and they strung themselves out
like Bill always did, and they paid the ultimate price. Brent and I went in
with two big scooters each, plenty of gas, safeties, surveyed the entire
line and got out with full hundreds, and nobody even got cold, much less
killed. Gavin's efforts to badmouth my dive planning and methods are a laugh
considering his track record. But , resentment does funny things to people.
Sherwood surveyed about 800 feet of line , and it was all wrong. Those guys
put in a lot more, and my bet is that Sherwood was back there surveying all
by himself, just like these two used to do to me, and he got freaked and
spent the rest of the time trying to catch them and turn the dive. Diving
with those two was solo diving, and I held no illusions that either one of
them would help me for one second if things went wrong. That is a far cry
from my relationship with Jarrod in the water, or any DIR diver for that
matter.
Gavin feels he is being criticized for these people's deaths. He
complains about me saying Bill Main left his buddy McFadden, and then goes
on to explain that he ( Bill Gavin) was solo diving while Bill Main and Bill
McFadden were deep air diving, and goes on to criticize DIR and talk about
"hogarthian". Hello, Mom? If you have not read this, go see it to believe
it.
Gavin got warned on Sherwood. Gavin actually wised up after McFadden ( no
more air dives). By the way, I heard about the accident while taking my
cavern class - Bill and Bill are big on the time thing, and the truth is
they both should be embarrassed criticizing myself and Jarrod who took it
beyond their wildest dream in a fraction of the time. Bill thinks I am
blaming him for Parker's death. What I did was to discontinue the practices
that contributed to these situations. I do not let people dive teknas while
Bill dives a Gavin and the tekna fails. I do not let practicing alcoholics
and drug addicts do exploration dives, especially when they come to me and
tell me they have a problem. I do not do kamikaze stretch dives, although I
did with Gavin and learned the easy way not to do it thereafter.
Gavin criticizes me for not taking action on Parker. My account of the
story is called "My 77th Cave Dive". The two guys with me, Bill Main and
Lamar English, had 15 years of cave dives. Bill Main and I both thought a
scooter had run away to the ceiling and we went to the ceiling to retrieve
it ( the arm "flailing" that Lamar talks about). When the water cleared, we
saw the scooters sitting where we left them. Gavin accurately points out
that "grins" dives should not be done, and I do not allow them, and Gavin
should have pointed out that letting somebody with 77 cave dives take on
that kind of responsibility was stupid. I don't do that either today.
As Jim Cobb points out, these guys are trying to loose the guilt. I don't
care about their guilt or their feelings or anything else. If you listen to
guys like this ( who are long out of it and who are in denial), you don't
get a chance to learn valuable lessons. I learned them, I practice from
them, and I have the track record to prove it.
Gavin could not deal with the "politics" of access, as he said, he asked
me to deal with it, he then asked me to take the whole thing over and he
would go back to being the Engineer, and I did just that. I got access to
everything, and I put procedures in place at that time which still exist
today.
Anyway, I learned a lot from Bill Gavin that was good, and learned a lot
by example of what not to do. I never learned anything from Main but total
bull****. Lamar was a clever guy and I took what I could from him as well.
Then, Jarrod and I moved on. I have never resented anyone, and can't imagine
the feeling, but it must be powerful to get these guys off the bench after
ten years. I think is speaks a lot about the psychology of this sport.
__________________
Wow! I didn't mean to ignite all this! I realize now I should have excerpted from the linked story, the (sub-) story I was referring to:
"REGARDING BILL MCFADEN’S DEATH
I [Bill Gavin] previously wrote a detailed account of the 1988 dive that resulted in Bill McFaden’s death. It was published somewhere, shortly thereafter, though I don’t recall where. I’m sure it can be located on the internet by those that are interested. At the time of McFaden’s death George was years away from becoming involved with cave diving or the WKPP and in my view has no business commenting on it. I was solo diving on my scooter in a different part of Little Dismal than Bill Main and Bill McFaden. I was in a very tight downstream siphon and didn’t want anyone behind me. Main and McFaden, who were swimming, had gone to survey about two hundred feet of line that McFaden and I had laid a week or two before. On the day of McFaden’s death I had finished my dive and was on my way out when Bill Main signaled me from the downstream section. George incorrectly (and rather callously) stated that McFaden’s buddy (Main) “left him”. Main had emerged from a low silty area thinking McFaden was right behind him. He turned and waited for McFaden, but McFaden did not come. At this time he had only been waiting a few seconds and did not think there was a problem, but wanted me to hang out just in case. I got a bad feeling and some instinct made me elect to enter the area. I found McFaden within 100 feet, off the line, not moving. I led him out and just as we emerged into clear water he signaled out of gas. Keep in mind, McFaden has been missing for one to two minutes and is already out of gas? I gave him my long hose and I could hear him breathing like a horse and knew he was scared. He grabbed my manifold like a vise and I hit the trigger. We got to a vertical pit and I stopped motoring and started venting my dry suit. Suddenly I realized that even though I was venting as fast as I could we were ascending rapidly. McFaden would not let go of my manifold to vent his suit. Next thing I knew I was pinned like a bug to the ceiling. I couldn't get him to let go of my manifold so I could even turn around. I finally had to use the scooter to pull us back down so we could continue out. During the entire exit, Bill Main had hold of McFaden’s legs, trying to pull him down by getting as negatively buoyant as he could. By the time we got near the entrance I ran out of gas. I was seconds away from passing out when Bill Main starting buddy breathing with me on his short hose. By now Bill had already given his long hose to McFaden. Bill Main never hesitated to share gas with both of us, even if it meant buddy breathing off a short hose. At this point my head was a ball of screaming agony from carbon dioxide build up. I could barely do anything but try to catch my breath. After a minute or so I noticed Bill Main picking his long hose up from the floor. He grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the silted out bedding plane area back into the cave. I was screaming into my/his regulator because I DID NOT want to go back INTO the cave, but he was taking us to clearer water. Off to the left I saw McFaden upside down on the ceiling, pressed there by his dry suit, apparently dead. (The preliminary autopsy report indicated that he had embolised. I would guess that this occurred during the rapid ascent from the pit at 180 feet or during the final ascent across the last room.) Once in clear water, we stabilized our situation, swapped second stages so I would be on Main’s long hose, relocated the line and made our exit. When I broke down my gear later you could take my regulators off the manifold without even closing the valves. I did everything I could for McFaden and so did Bill Main and we both nearly got killed. Make absolutely no mistake - trying to rescue a panicked diver is one of the most dangerous things you can attempt."
Still, this thread has been extremely informative (to me). Thanks, DanV. I had never read this rebuttal to the linked story--though, I was never so naive as to believe that there was only one "truth" to this hair-raising story. And, as always, your perspective is greatly appreciated, as you've been doing this type of diving for a very long time, indeed! However, the situation where a diver might need to buddy-breathe his short hose did not seem so improbable to me that, even if we could easily accommodate it (say, by using a slightly longer short hose), we should not. Which is why I dive a slightly longer short hose--when I dive a long hose-short hose configuration, that is. I think you and TS&M are quite right: If I dove with people who were all trained the same way to avoid being put into situations like this, and to react/respond to emergencies the exact same way, the need to buddy-breathe the short hose would be extremely improbable.
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Hi rx7diver,
The biggest lesson in the whole group of stories here, to me, is that proper planning and practices prevent the form of cf that had 3 buddies breathing off of one. A lot of people hated George, and a lot liked him, but it would be hard for anyone to deny that his absolute team practices, without personal preference deviations allowed, stopped the rampant deaths that had been plagueing these huge cave dives for the years before him.
With the smart plans, you don't have to solve problems that should never be problems
Regards,
DanV
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