In need of vast amounts of education

[pcarlson1911]

I thought I might post on progress that we've made on our goals.

1. Our budget has brought our 75 dives logged to 60 (for the first timein my life it costs moneyto breath)I did log dive 29 yesterday.

2. Shannon and I have completed our checkout dives for AOw with Ber. We still have some homework to take careof, and a test to take, but we are on our wayto AOW.

SHAMELESS PLUG Bers class was great. The fact that we got so much dive time in was awesome. The tasks we were required to complete not only introduced us to the specialties, but they also taxedour ailities. We are better divers because of this Ber and her class. When we are done we might actually be advanced divers, not just divers with an advanced cert.

3. Budget will also shorten the road trip. We will head over to traverse city, petosky, harborsprings to visit some friends and also schedule a dive or six in the straights of Mackinac, but huron and superior will have to wait.

4. We got out on Erie yesterday afternoon to dive the craftsman. Very cool to dive our first real wreck. we took my bro in laws 17 ft bow rider for the 30 mi round trip. The lake waslike glass, the vis was 15-20 and we got 41 minutes of bottom time on the dive. Our boat was still there when we got back to the top, so all was good.

In two weeks, we will take the 27 footer out to dive something mid week anyone want to share gas???

I'm glad scubaboard is back up!
pc

 

[diverbrian]

I thought I might post on progress that we've made on our goals.

1. Our budget has brought our 75 dives logged to 60 (for the first timein my life it costs moneyto breath)I did log dive 29 yesterday.

2. Shannon and I have completed our checkout dives for AOw with Ber. We still have some homework to take careof, and a test to take, but we are on our wayto AOW.

SHAMELESS PLUG Bers class was great. The fact that we got so much dive time in was awesome. The tasks we were required to complete not only introduced us to the specialties, but they also taxedour ailities. We are better divers because of this Ber and her class. When we are done we might actually be advanced divers, not just divers with an advanced cert.

3. Budget will also shorten the road trip. We will head over to traverse city, petosky, harborsprings to visit some friends and also schedule a dive or six in the straights of Mackinac, but huron and superior will have to wait.

4. We got out on Erie yesterday afternoon to dive the craftsman. Very cool to dive our first real wreck. we took my bro in laws 17 ft bow rider for the 30 mi round trip. The lake waslike glass, the vis was 15-20 and we got 41 minutes of bottom time on the dive. Our boat was still there when we got back to the top, so all was good.

In two weeks, we will take the 27 footer out to dive something mid week anyone want to share gas???

I'm glad scubaboard is back up!
pc

Glad to hear that things are going well. From the night dive that I did with you and Shannon at M&G, I knew that Ber was going to have no problem with you in her class.

It was a pleasure to dive with you and I hope to do it again one of these days.

 

[RPanick]

It sounds like you dove and left the boat untended. I've seen people do it and get away with it, but there are a few cases where they didn't. It really is a VERY good idea to bring someone along who knows how to run the boat and use the radio. Here are a couple of possible things that could go wrong:

1. You misjudge the current and can't make it back to the mooring line. You finally get to the surface but can't swim back to the boat.
2. You have regulator failure or out of air, and you have to share air, but you don't have enough to make it back to the mooring. So you have to surface and hope you can swim for the boat.
3. The line or cleat gives way, or the mooring was weak and breaks. Either way the boat drifts off.
4. Someone gets hurt and can't climb back in out their own. Try it sometime, do you think your wife could haul your limp body out of the water on her own. I doubt you would be able to get her out all that easily either.
5. Weather picks up unexpectedly, Lake Erie is famous for it, part of the reason there are so many wrecks.
6. You get lost on the wreck (its not hard on some of the wrecks to get confused) and you have to come up away from the boat, and can't swim back.
7. Fire, leaky boat, or other problems.
8. A third person is real handy to drive the boat or call for help while applying first aid to someone.

Regardless if you take someone else or not, file a plan with a friend or relative with exact departure, destination and return time. If you run into a problem someone will eventually come look for you. If you change your plan, call them to let them know.

Diving in the open lake can be very stressful, particularly when you are still learning. I would suggest doing a bunch of training dives at one of the quaries. When you can do all of the your skills without thinking, then you are getting close to being ready. It will also make it easier to get to know other divers that can give you advice and may be willing to go along with you on your dive trips.

Hitting the quaries will also help you improve your air consumption, team work, bouyancy control, and will give you a better feel for what you can handle. One of the things they teach you in Stress and Rescue is that panic and problems occur because of multiple stressors, the more you add at one time the greater the risk of loosing control. By doing a lot of practice in the quaries you can reduce the number of stressors by becoming familiar with them.

Let me give you a scenario that I see fairly often in new and old divers. Most people for some reason get into the habit of diving single file, particularly when new. The strongest diver usually leads for some reason. The weaker diver struggles to keep up. Now lets add a complication, the second diver gets a cramp, and really falls behind. Lets say you have 15 ft of visibility, it only takes a few seconds before you can't see each other. Now the second diver has a bunch of stressors, poor visibility, cold, cramp, lost buddy, that leads to panic and the second diver bolts to the surface. Now assuming that the second diver made it safely without an injury, they may be quite some distance from the boat with a cramp and not able to get back to the boat because of wind, waves or current.

The first diver finally looks back and doesn't find the second diver. Back tracks but can't find the buddy. Would you bolt for the surface in a panic (more stressors here). Or would you calmly swim back for the anchor line do a controlled ascent to the boat and then look for your buddy. On very big wrecks its actually possible to swim past each other without seeing each other.

So here is the test, how do you prevent this from happening early on.

Kind of scary isn't it, but it can happen very easily. By diving in a controlled environment, you can get your routine down, learn to function as a team. You can figure out how to solve these problems early on. Figure out what works and what doesn't. More training would be a good idea too.

Going out on charters the first year is a good way to get some first hand experience where people are there to help you out. Besides you will pick up a lot of little things by watching how they do things. More importantly to realize when it makes more sense to call it off and head in.

Sounds like you are still relatively young, don't rush it, you have plenty of time. Remember there are old divers, and bold divers, but no old bold divers. The wrecks and lakes have been there a long time, they aren't going anywhere.

Not trying to dampen your enthusiasm, just trying to channel it a bit.

 

[pcarlson1911]

RPanick -
I'm very pleased with the choices that we made and the process that we used to reach those decsions.

Our plan was certainly not without risk, however, based on the conditions which were near perfect, the likely hood of the problems you mentioned occuring were very small.

If there had been 15mph winds and 3-4 footers would we have left the boat unattended? no way. But there weren't 3-4 footers, the water was like glass.

If the wreck would have been 8miles from shore in a remote area, no way. the dive was 1.5 miles from shore, and is frequented by fishing boats. (3 were there when we arrived, 7 when we left.)

if the mooring would have been a milk jug on 1/4" line, would we leave the boat? no way. this is a permenant MAST mooring and the first thing we did was inspect the mooring.

If the vis would have been zero, no way. it was 15'. We used a beacon on the bottom of the mooring, and used a 100' reel to navigate the wreck and maintained a side by side formation most of the time with physical contact.

I am fairly new to diving, but not to evaluation of risk. I have been mountaineering since I was 16. the risks are different, but no less or more severe. Once you know what the risks are, you evaluate the likelyhood of the problem, the severity of the results if things go bad, then determine if the chance is worth it.

On Sunday, it was for us, it would have been the same on Monday, today with 40% chance of t storms, nope.

We will continue to evaluate each day and each dive and we will never be afraid to thumb it!
pc

 

[RPanick]

Excellent, I'm glad you have thought this thru, so many people don't. Even those with a lot more experience that should know better.

 

[pcarlson1911]

my experience has taught me that the more experience I have the more I need to force myself to cosciously think things through. expeienced people get hurt by being ho hum too content. I'm still veryconscious of every dive. I worry about when I get comfortable.