Lessons learned- embarrassing but true

[beester]

The instructor was as surprised about this as I was. Previous dives didn't indicate any problems of this nature and it wasn't until he tried engaging in this type of ascent that it came out. someone suggested that the instructor must have deliberately set this up, which is complete nonsense, of course. Once it happened, however, it would be foolish not to look at what could be gained from it.



---------- Post added December 22nd, 2014 at 10:29 PM ----------

I'm sorry returner but it is YOU who suggested this. At least to set up a team that was a challenge to you, your words:

"3) This team was not put together randomly. I know this instructor very well and in terms of just pure diving skills I don't think there's much that I'll take home from this. He knows me very well and knows that I usually dive with the same group of people and that myself and my usual buddies (who he also knows) have a way of executing these dives that works like a machine. So what he decided to do in order to challenge me on some level in this course is (a) pair me up with someone who is less experienced generally and whose experience is mostly in caves and (b) someone who is poor at communication.
"

Btw what was the reaction of the other trainees and instructor on the incident after a cool down period? What was their input on what had happened and how to improve?

I've had my fair share of incidents, and in some cases my reasoning, thoughts and triggers to reactions where totally different from my buddies, because of perceived reality. I had a profound experience on a North Sea wreck which shook me to the bone, and set me up on to the GUE path. For my buddy, although he realized what had happened, this was nothing important and certainly not something that warranted dive procedure change.

What will happen next? Will you do some shallow dives with the other team members before continueing the course. Will you stop the course? Did the cave buddy acknowledge that he felt very much uneasy in the ascend, and what caused the run away ascend? Did the buddy that separated told you why he did that?

No easy situation... we are all human and make mistakes, and it's never easy to talk about those and discuss ways to avoid it in future.

 

[Diver0001]

The instructor was as surprised about this as I was. Previous dives didn't indicate any problems of this nature and it wasn't until he tried engaging in this type of ascent that it came out. someone suggested that the instructor must have deliberately set this up, which is complete nonsense, of course. Once it happened, however, it would be foolish not to look at what could be gained from it.



---------- Post added December 22nd, 2014 at 10:29 PM ----------

I'm sorry returner but it is YOU who suggested this:

"3) This team was not put together randomly. I know this instructor very well and in terms of just pure diving skills I don't think there's much that I'll take home from this. He knows me very well and knows that I usually dive with the same group of people and that myself and my usual buddies (who he also knows) have a way of executing these dives that works like a machine. So what he decided to do in order to challenge me on some level in this course is (a) pair me up with someone who is less experienced generally and whose experience is mostly in caves and (b) someone who is poor at communication.
"

Long live the internet. I guess the message wasn't clear. I said that the intstuctor was creating a challenge for us and someone made the step to suggest that he deliberately created a CF

 

[Redshift]

It's often easier to talk about the screw ups and who did what and assign blame. And it's also easy to go from identifying the problems to having an attitude that won't help us learn or improve. My cave instructor always started the debriefing with what had gone right, before discussing the problems.

I'm not shocked by the instructor using a rebreather, but I'm also not very fond of it. His best bailout gases are different from your deco gases (not sure what kind of choices were made, but it can have an impact if something happens), it's good for you to dive with people on rebreathers, but your main focus is trimix diving, you don't want to have to deal with a problem occurring to the instructor in a different gear (you, the students, are also his buddy, if needed) and although you may be familiar with your OC equipment, this course brings extra bottles, ways to manage them, gas switches, etc and it's best to see from an instructor and do it than to see from other students who may not be so proficient.
But this was not at the core of the problems.

A demanding environment is needed for people to improve. This appeared to have been too demanding. Not the dive itself, but the group. I think that things may have been gone over without enough detail at first because you were all experienced. There are lots of experienced divers who are not good divers. And they can even be, but do things differently. The first steps should have gone to get you knowing each other and expose possible shortcomings. If the first dives were easy and uneventful then there weren't situations where these shortcomings would have arisen.

One diver's problem with buoyancy could be a poor dry suit or his own inability to do things in mid-water. I am ok with giving him another chance if he either gets some dives with that borrowed suit (although if the suit doesn't fit well, more dives won't make it fit well) or comes with his own suit. And then do a shallower dive with mid water swims and ascent to evaluate him. If he does not perform to satisfaction he should go and practice and try the course at a later time. We have to understand that being proficient in one environment does not mean being proficient in another.

I don't think you told us what the problem with the other diver who didn't communicate properly was. What happened? He needs not only to communicate better, but also think of the others and what's best for everybody and take advice in consideration, not just decide "I'm doing this and the others can just follow me or not." Maybe the instructor could have stepped in when that happened.

 

[Diver0001]

I don't think you told us what the problem with the other diver who didn't communicate properly was. What happened?

He was the bigger concern to me, both during that dive and going forward to the next dives. The guy with the borrowed drysuit will have his own suit back before we do another dive. We already decided on that. His buoyancy control isn't "top shelf" but with his own gear it was good enough. He's also been beating himself up about that dive for the last couple of weeks so I'm sure he'll be 100% focused on the next time LOL. We've also decided to change the plan and the approach to the dive such that we're taking a step back before going forward again.

The issue that the other diver had is that he was experiencing vertigo. He wasn't sure what brought it on, but he was sure he wanted to turn back. He was next to me when we reached 40m. He turned to me, shook his head "no" and then gave a sign that I wasn't familiar with. It looked like "something wrong" with fingers held like "hang loose". I initially didn't know if he wanted to call the dive or to switch to a bail out gas. Then he turned tail to start swimming back the other way.

He didn't wait for a response. What added to the confusion at this point is that it happened at exactly 40m at exactly 20m. So we spent a few seconds trying to figure out if he had misunderstood the planned depth at which to turn or the planned time at which to turn. The dive was planned to 50m for 25m.

Another factor that contributed to my initial confusion is that this diver is not doing the trimix course. He's already trimix certified but he's working on becoming an instructor. So on previous dives our instructor had given him instructions to deviate from the plan to see how we would respond. So when he first made the turn I thought it was a planned challenge.

So when he initially turned to go back my first reaction was to make eye contact with the instructor and give him a "what" sign. He signed to me that he didn't know what he was doing in such a way that I was sure that this wasn't part of an exercise. Since I'm the quickest of the group I caught him up and tackled him, asking him to stop for a second. I initially signed "ok" to him and he signed back "ok" and then "something wrong". I then put my reg up to his ear and called out "what's wrong", which I thought he could understand. He then signed "something wrong" again and indicated that he wanted to call the dive and swim back over the bottom. I then called in his ear "how can I help you" and he repeated that he wanted to swim back over the bottom.

This wasn't the plan but given that he was experiencing vertigo I understood after the fact why he didn't want to make a mid water ascent.

I still need to run through this scenario again with the team because I'm very unhappy with how we dealt with this. The dizzy diver had a computer and I have enough understanding of the dive that we were doing that I could have gone back over the bottom with him and rolled up a new ball-park plan enroute. I knew there was more or less a 1:1 relationship between time spent under 10m and time spent above 10m on this kind of ascent because I've done a fucton of dives at these depths and times on air/nitrox before. I had also noticed it when I was rolling up the table for this dive so between his computer and my ballpark idea of the amount of deco I would have needed to do, I could have gone with him.

I didn't have the skills to communicate this to the instructor. He knows me very well, as I said before, so I think if I could have found a way to communicate to him that I thought we should split up the team and that I wanted to go with the other diver and that I would be ok, that he would have taken that leap of faith. As it was, I I suggested again to Mr. Vertigo that he should come with us but he insisted that he needed to swim back over the bottom. At this point the team needed to make a choice. This diver was utterly refusing to make a mid-water ascent. 2 other divers were on tables and this contingency hadn't been discussed. Basically we had to chose between :

a) all 4 of us going back over the bottom
b) me going back with him while the instructor took the other student on the planned ascent
c) the instructor going with him and leaving the two students to do their ascent unsupervised
d) leaving him to swim back over the bottom and the other 3 divers sticking to plan

We chose for plan d.

He needs not only to communicate better, but also think of the others and what's best for everybody and take advice in consideration, not just decide "I'm doing this and the others can just follow me or not." Maybe the instructor could have stepped in when that happened.

Well... I don't think we could have foreseen this scenario. I think his judgement that making the ascent mid-water would make things worse may have been right, given the circumstances. I'm not sure the instructor would have been able to change his mind about this.

R..

---------- Post added December 26th, 2014 at 05:09 PM ----------

One last thing.

I'm actually happy I started this thread, despite the damage to my ego.

It's really hard to write about a dive that got off the rails when the internet is full of armchair quarterbacks and stories about how people portray themselves as being perfect. So there you go. I'm not perfect. I considered keeping this to myself but I want to take all the lessons from this that I can. I've gotten some good food for thought on this thread and ultimately it's about the goal.

I don't feel the least bit inclined to assign blame for this incident. Who is to blame, or who failed the team... none of that matters. My hope is that, on the one hand, I'll never experience something like this again, and maybe... just maybe... we might become a little more open about discussing our failures.

I don't know about the lot of you, but I'd rather learn about stuff like this online, safely behind my computer, than to have to deal with it in the water.

R..

 

[TSandM]

Rob, I would like to give you kudos for posting this, too. Too few people post stories of dives that don't go as they would have liked them to go, and those are the dives from which we learn.

One question: Did you have wetnotes, and if not, do you think they would have helped sort the issue out and keep the team together?

 

[Diver0001]

Well, I wasn't alone with mr. vertigo, of course. The instructor and the other diver were there although a bit behind me. After insisting a couple of times that he should keep to the plan and seeing him insist on going back over the bottom, the instructor indicated to me and my buddy to pair up and get on with the stops. It was his call to go for plan d.

I did have a note pad but didn't feel in a position to hold a debate about it at that point.

R..

 

[TSandM]

So, it was your INSTRUCTOR who decided to let a diver with a poorly understood problem go back to shore BY HIMSELF??? I just lost a great deal of respect for the man.

 

[Diver0001]

Well as I said, I decided not to lay blame here and to just take out of it what I can.

R..

 

[Subcooled]

Thank you for sharing this story.

It is all too easy to describe the correct procedure after an incident has happened. I have been in similar situations, and not just once. The post provoked some thought.

Perhapas to clarify this to myself, I will list some of my thoughts below. Please tell me if I have understood the root cause of events correctly.

When I read the description I got the feeling that your dive was, at least part of the time, a quadruple solo dive. The team was not constantly monitoring their buddies (lights) and the team was not keeping a tight formation. Instead there was some spring action: diving and waiting, diving and waiting... Would you have stayed at touching distance from your buddies, then the troubled diver could have signalled the closest buddy, by light or by touch, in a matter of seconds, and then the whole team would have been notified and stopped. Beeing close to the team, with everyone alert and present, the troubled diver could have relaxed a bit, and more efficient communication would have been possible. It is not fun when you experience some challenges and the team happily swims away only to turn around and look back every five minutes (I have been in that situation and it was the longest breath hold of my live, I assure you). So it all boils down to the night diving lesson of the cmas p2 course Stay close, keep formation, and if something strange happens, signal and stop. Sometimes we forget this when the dive is exciting and there is a goal to reach. I was on a course where my buddy developed some equalizations issues while we were descending through a layer of low visibility, and we stopped, nicely, but lost the instructor who was busy with wetnotes. These situations happen so suddenly... On another dive my buddy developed some buoyancy issues that he was not able to communicate to me. This caused him increasing levels of anxiety as we were in an overhead environment. There was not much I could do, as his reasoning slowly faded. The only thing I could do was to hand hold him, firmly, and be present, as we were swimming towards the exit. Then I made a critical error and let go of his hand. He panicked and the events that ensued were not pretty. Panic. Entanglement. Loss of consciousness. All the hell broke loose, but we got him out alive. That little reaffirming hand hold was the last string keeping him in control. I learned the hard way how important these mental things are.

So... could the event described by the OP have been avoided by just staying closer together and taking the time to communicate?

 

[LiteHedded]

Thank you for sharing this story.

It is all too easy to describe the correct procedure after an incident has happened. I have been in similar situations, and not just once. The post provoked some thought.

Perhapas to clarify this to myself, I will list some of my thoughts below. Please tell me if I have understood the root cause of events correctly.

When I read the description I got the feeling that your dive was, at least part of the time, a quadruple solo dive. The team was not constantly monitoring their buddies (lights) and the team was not keeping a tight formation. Instead there was some spring action: diving and waiting, diving and waiting... Would you have stayed at touching distance from your buddies, then the troubled diver could have signalled the closest buddy, by light or by touch, in a matter of seconds, and then the whole team would have been notified and stopped. Beeing close to the team, with everyone alert and present, the troubled diver could have relaxed a bit, and more efficient communication would have been possible. It is not fun when you experience some challenges and the team happily swims away only to turn around and look back every five minutes (I have been in that situation and it was the longest breath hold of my live, I assure you). So it all boils down to the night diving lesson of the cmas p2 course Stay close, keep formation, and if something strange happens, signal and stop. Sometimes we forget this when the dive is exciting and there is a goal to reach. I was on a course where my buddy developed some equalizations issues while we were descending through a layer of low visibility, and we stopped, nicely, but lost the instructor who was busy with wetnotes. These situations happen so suddenly... On another dive my buddy developed some buoyancy issues that he was not able to communicate to me. This caused him increasing levels of anxiety as we were in an overhead environment. There was not much I could do, as his reasoning slowly faded. The only thing I could do was to hand hold him, firmly, and be present, as we were swimming towards the exit. Then I made a critical error and let go of his hand. He panicked and the events that ensued were not pretty. Panic. Entanglement. Loss of consciousness. All the hell broke loose, but we got him out alive. That little reaffirming hand hold was the last string keeping him in control. I learned the hard way how important these mental things are.

So... could the event described by the OP have been avoided by just staying closer together and taking the time to communicate?

Some of it for sure