Learning the hard way...

[Dirty-Dog]

As I have mentioned in other posts, my wife and I are total noobs. Our total dive experience to date is a resort course followed by OW dives, last year in Cancun. Dive #2 was, for me, a hard lesson.

The DM, Sue and I were drifting along a reef. Fabulous. Sadly, I let myself get distracted enough that I failed to pay close attention to my gauges. When I did look, I saw that I had gotten down to 250PSI. Ooops. I got their attention and we headed up. Controlled ascent, obviously, no reason to rush.

The problem came when we reached the surface. I inflated my BCD (jacket style) without noticing that during the dive, the cumberbun had worked it's way up. And when inflated, it did a lovely job of preventing my diaphragm from moving.

Being unable to breathe is scary. Very scary. My SPG still showed that I had air, but I thought maybe it was inaccurate. So I got Sue's alternate air. Still couldn't breathe. Finally occured to me to pop the velcro, which, of course, fix the problem immediately.

I think this entire episode was caused by my lack of experience.

What I did wrong: not paying close attention to my gauges and BCD fit.

What I did right: I didn't panic. I stayed calm enough (barely!) to sort out the problem and fix it.

Opinions?

 

[Bubbletrubble]

Glad that everything turned out OK for you. Thanks for sharing your story. Lesson learned on watching your SPG, eh?

Just curious. Why did you go for Sue's alternate air...when you were already at the surface?

Perhaps next time consider not fully inflating your BCD at the surface. In saltwater, your 3mm? wetsuit will provide a fair amount of positive buoyancy and you won't have to add much air to your BCD. I recommend that you only add enough to be comfortable at the surface.

Do you plan on doing more vacation diving in the future? Have you considered doing some local diving? In either case, it might be advantageous to find a good instructor and get more advanced dive training.

Be safe out there...

 

[Dirty-Dog]

I didn't mean to imply that asking for her octo was particularly logical.
It was dive #2. Ever. And my mind said "you need a regulator to breathe..."
We did 6 more dives without any other excitement of that type. And yes, we plan to do lots more diving. We're heading to Cancun again May 4th. We've done the eLearning for OW and will do the dives to get our c cards while we're in Cancun.
Local diving is somewhat limited... Colorado has lots of mountains, but not much in the way of dive spots.

 

[Bubbletrubble]

I'm sorry. I'm completely confused. In the initial post you stated that you did a resort course followed by OW dives. I assumed that the "resort course" was a quickie Basic OW course -- all skills, lecture sessions, pool sessions, OW check-out dives completed in a short period of time. Since you are now talking about getting your C-cards on the next Cancun trip, it leads me to believe that you were doing a Discover Scuba-type experience. It's more than a little strange that the DM in your scenario wasn't monitoring everything for you (particularly your remaining gas) if you were doing the Discover Scuba thing. Can you please clarify what kind of training you've already received?

Also, was this a PADI-affiliated dive op that took you out on these dives?

BTW, kudos on not panicking completely...

 

[Dirty-Dog]

The resort course falls between the "Discover Scuba" course and a full OW course. You get some very basic skills (mask clearing, regulator recovery, that sort of thing) and pool time. After, you are allowed to do supervised shallow dives with a DM in a small group (no more than 4 noobs per DM) over the next couple weeks. You do the skills/pool time in the morning, and your first OW dive that afternoon.
The DM was spending most of his time with Sue, simply because she needed more attention. She's not as comfortable in the water as I am, and she had some difficulties initially with equalization and buoyancy. As far as my air goes, I don't consider that anybodies responsibility other than my own. I knew it needed to be monitored, I knew that a guy my size (6'1", 200lbs) would use air faster than Sue (5'7" and 125lbs), and I simply didn't monitor it close enough.
The DM is a PADI instructor, and we will be finishing our OW course with him.

 

[a22shady]

Thats why you should go with a BP/w setup no cumerband to move on you.

Halcyon Eclipse setup is great, Also have Diverite transpac which alot of people like. And variuos others. Best thing about these is they will grow with you.

 

[b1gcountry]

I like and dive with backplates, but there are plenty of folks diving basic BCs with no problems too. You just need to know not to overinflate them.

Don't stress out too much about the event. I had something similar happen to me during my OW checkout dives. I ran out of air completely at around 40'. I was also 12lbs overweighted, and swimming against a retreating tide. You had a scare. Everyone does eventually. It's best to get through it without harm, and just keep diving. I'm sure you won't let it happen again.

Tom

 

[charlesml3]

Thats why you should go with a BP/w setup no cumerband to move on you.

Nonsense. There are tens of thousands of divers out there using regular BC's with no issue. His problem is lack of experience, not improper gear.

-Charles

 

[b1gcountry]

Lets not turn this into a BC vs BP argument, please. I don't think that's what the OP was looking for.

Tom

 

[TSandM]

Good story, and thank you for sharing it! There really is nothing like feeling that you can't breathe to wake the panic dragon, and asking for your wife's octo tells you you were there a little bit. But you didn't lose it, and you were able to go back to logical thinking, and that's a really important lesson.

I got mine jumping into 43 degree water (with ice slurry on the top of it) in Canada, and suddenly feeling incredibly short of breath. (Turns out this is something that happens when you abruptly immerse yourself in ice water.) I had my reg in, spat it out, couldn't breathe any better, got my head dunked by a wave, put the reg back in and was contemplating levitating like a Saturday cartoon character, when I said to myself, "Idiot, you're ON THE SURFACE, holding onto a rope that's attached to the boat you just got off of, and that you can get back ON any time you want. Knock it off!" And it turned out that just waiting allowed the feeling to pass. But I tell this just to say that I know from personal experience, how hard it is to remain calm when you can't breathe.

This is also a good story to point out the concept of the "incident pit". You had one problem, which was running low on gas, but you handled that by making an immediate and controlled ascent . . . the right response, and the matter could have ended there. But then overinflating the BC compounded the stress you were already under by knowing how little gas you had. If you hadn't controlled the panic response, things could have spiralled downhill quickly.

The idea of the incident pit is to stay out of it in the first place, or, if you do have problems, keep them minor by dealing with them quickly and effectively. You learned the right lesson from this one -- monitoring your gas and not running low prevents the stress of an unexpected ascent.