That’s OK then as BSAC teach secondary take and donate. The reason take is there is because in real OOG situations (evidenced from BSAC incident reports) the donor quite often isn’t aware their buddy has an issue until the reg is taken.
Long-hose in the time of COVID-19
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I a man asking for more detail on what ‘adapt’ means in each case
No, they will drown equally, neither has been trained to have a regulator taken from their mouth.
Understand that I think the claim that a plan based on a primary regulator being stolen is bravado, demonstrating the ruffly tufty hardness of the proposer, not a reasonable response based on risk assessments and data,
This is an disadvantage of primary donate, however there is a fine mitigation in place which is not having panicking OOG divers because the agencies that teach it also push teamwork, gas planning and being generally competent. They don’t need to cater for this risk as it is designed out.
On the other hand, we have self taught (PD) people getting into the water with people who learned to dive over a couple of weekends. They (the self taught PDers) seem to feel the need to proclaim this risk as an advantage.
When I dive OC for fun, with proper buddies, I dive hog looped with a long hose. I expect that they will not run out of gas, and if they do to ask for gas as briefed. Without proper buddies I swap over so I breath the backup as a primary and stow the 7ft secondary as an octopus, I can donate it or have it taken with no drama, as far as the buddy or anyone else in the water is concerned it is just another octopus.
Having people argue for PD using rubbish assertions is not helpful. There are real advantages, stick with those, but understand there are disadvantages too.
We don’t, it’s likely to be taken straight back and the secondary offered.
CaveSloth
Contributor
I checked all that. I actually bought many hoses of different lengths and I keep coming back to the 28” for comfort and usability.
StefinSB
Contributor
I can finally understand the reason for GI's rants in the old days. Thank you.
During my open-water exam for getting the 3-stars CMAS extension to my certification, the examiner used to suddenly remove mask and/or regulator to the instructor being evaluated.
He did remove the reg to my wife, from behind, so she could not see him coming. Of course he waited she had expired, and starting inspiring. She did not drown, she coughed a little, grabbed her secondary, purged it pressing the button (as we were trained to do in such a case) and started breathing from it. She passed the exam.
To me, instead, he did remove the mask. But he made the error of making him visible. As he removed my mask, I removed his one, placed it on my face, evacuated it from water, and looked around... he was not around, as he did not expect my reaction, so he surfaced quickly. He was quite upset with me, and I seriously risked not passing the exam. After a long discussion with the other two examiners, they found I did not behave really wrong, as I did not panic, so I got my 3-stars degree.
However, the point was that in our training the case to have the regulator and/or the mask taken away was specifically included, and we were trained to manage the situation (well, I did not manage exactly as I should have been, indeed).
There is another point which was not discussed. If a normally-trained rec divers comes to you, and tries to grab the secondary, which is necklaced and with short hose, do you think that this will end well? He probably will not be able to breath from it comfortably, resulting in a mess. In think that my approach is the most robust: I can easily donate both the primary and the secondary, and I can survive whatever one is grabbed by a panicked OOA diver.
My primary does not have a hose so long as my secondary, but is still around 1m, which is enough for being donated without too much problems. None of the two is necklaced, the secondary has a quick-release attachment to my harness, which will free it just grabbing.
Of course before the dive with people who do not know me I ill show them my secondary with its bright long yellow hose, and suggest them to take this one if OOA. I really do not see why they should take my primary, but in the case, I was explictly trained to survive to such an action, and I hope to be yet fit enough for using my training and to avoid drowning...
He did remove the reg to my wife, from behind, so she could not see him coming. Of course he waited she had expired, and starting inspiring. She did not drown, she coughed a little, grabbed her secondary, purged it pressing the button (as we were trained to do in such a case) and started breathing from it. She passed the exam.
To me, instead, he did remove the mask. But he made the error of making him visible. As he removed my mask, I removed his one, placed it on my face, evacuated it from water, and looked around... he was not around, as he did not expect my reaction, so he surfaced quickly. He was quite upset with me, and I seriously risked not passing the exam. After a long discussion with the other two examiners, they found I did not behave really wrong, as I did not panic, so I got my 3-stars degree.
However, the point was that in our training the case to have the regulator and/or the mask taken away was specifically included, and we were trained to manage the situation (well, I did not manage exactly as I should have been, indeed).
There is another point which was not discussed. If a normally-trained rec divers comes to you, and tries to grab the secondary, which is necklaced and with short hose, do you think that this will end well? He probably will not be able to breath from it comfortably, resulting in a mess. In think that my approach is the most robust: I can easily donate both the primary and the secondary, and I can survive whatever one is grabbed by a panicked OOA diver.
My primary does not have a hose so long as my secondary, but is still around 1m, which is enough for being donated without too much problems. None of the two is necklaced, the secondary has a quick-release attachment to my harness, which will free it just grabbing.
Of course before the dive with people who do not know me I ill show them my secondary with its bright long yellow hose, and suggest them to take this one if OOA. I really do not see why they should take my primary, but in the case, I was explictly trained to survive to such an action, and I hope to be yet fit enough for using my training and to avoid drowning...
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long post, a third responding to a bunch of people, a third getting on a high horse and ranting, and a third of miscellaneous thoughts on the topic as I struggle to pick a side.
I was trained from day 1 in primary donate. I have never been trained in any other sort of OOG scenario other than primary donate.
I was taught, and still teach, the following arguments for primary donate.
1. Most important, you know without a doubt, that the regulator in your mouth is breathable. This is both that it functions as expected, and also is providing a breathable gas. Most common reason for failing to function would be some sort of debris stuck in the exhaust valve that will cause the diver to suck water and likely cause panic.
2. Experience says that a truly panicked diver will grab a working regulator from your mouth, so you are hoping for the best, but planning for the worst. If diver is panicking or on the verge of panic, then see point #1. The last thing you want is to hand them a regulator with a compromised exhaust valve because that first big breath in will more than likely cause a panic if they are on the edge.
The process we teach for primary donate, and is the standard for how it should be taught, is for you to switch to your secondary and validate function before you fully release the primary. This lets you check function and if you are well practiced, is done typically in less time than it takes most divers to fumble around and grab their octo. Under normal circumstances, you have more than enough time to swap because you can see it coming. If you don't, well you planned for the worst which was to have someone mug your primary and it's already gone. If the exhaust valve is not working properly, you've been trained on how to breathe from a freeflowing regulator and deal with that at least until you can get it fixed. You may not know if that other person has been trained on how to breathe from a reg with a failed exhaust diaphragm and then you circle back to inducing panic.
Once every few years, we have someone with some sort of health issue where we don't want to use primary donate either with them donating, or them receiving. You deal with it, but it's an exception and there are workarounds. The important takeaway is that with primary donate we are planning for the worst, but hoping for the best. If there is any real risk that someone is going to mug you for your regulator, which I have had happen from divers that I was not buddied with and others in this thread have indicated as well, then it makes sense to plan for that and work accordingly.
Current struggles.
Most of my diving these days is not compatible with primary donate. I'm on a rebreather, I'm on my double hose, or I'm in OC sidemount.
Sidemount can be somewhat strategic to facilitate primary donate for most of the dive. You ALWAYS start the dive on the long hose. This is a very likely time for someone to need gas right as they get in the water. In a cave, as you near the turnaround point, you ALWAYS are on the long hose. For whatever reason that seems to be a fun time for regs to fail, don't know why, but it is what it is. You ALWAYS finish the dive on your long hose. Less important in a cave, but especially in OW, as you start getting close to the end of the dive, people are most likely to run out of gas. If you are on stages or deco bottles, then primary donate works as well. This strategy with your gas switching on sidemount allows you to comply with primary donate during the highest risk portions of the dive, and you hope that the other diver asks nicely for your gas. If they ask nicely, you have more than enough time to unclip, take a breath or two to check function and clear the housing since we are nice and consider divers, and off you go.
Double hose is one of those things that I just really enjoy when I dive single tanks in OW and it's personal preference. I am aware they used to teach buddy breathing on them, but for all intents and purposes it is not a configuration where primary donate is going to happen. That said, we will treat this exactly the same as we would a rebreather where you aren't going to pass the loop over for a myriad of reasons.
In the DIR oriented mentality, it is argued to teach primary donate from day 1 because it is scalable through all levels of diving. For DIR diving where sidemount historically has not been something that was accepted and where rebreathers were left for a very select few divers for select projects, it was something so rare that it wasn't worth trying to reinvent the wheel. In BSAC however, CCR's were much more prevalent early on and that is one of the arguments for not working with primary donate because it is not scalable to rebreathers.
If we look at how the GUE rebreathers are set up, you have a "normal" set of doubles, and to donate you unclip the long hose, take the loop out of your mouth and switch to secondary, then bring loop back to your mouth. This is utterly obnoxious with OTS or TOS counterlungs, but on the RB80 with the bellows and the JJ with BMCL's, it's not that big of a deal. When you have that level of diver though, especially in a cave, you aren't going to get mugged. You'll see the light signals, and if they don't signal, you'll still see them turn around if you're in the back or have to turn around yourself if you're up front while they chase you down. Either way, in technical diving because of the lights and limited number of divers in the water, you can usually see it coming.
So the conundrum is how to handle what I truly believe to be a superior configuration for the vast majority of diving, and how to apply that to the diving that I'm currently doing where it can't work. The conundrum is where you place your priority and what you're willing to sacrifice. On one hand, I can prioritize what I feel to be a better way to dive and use that whenever I can. The sacrifice there is that I have to say that scalability of a single donation method from basic open water up through rebreather is less important than the benefits of consistency in training and methods at all levels of diving and all equipment configurations. On the other hand, I can prioritize that scalability and consistency which ultimately leads to what I believe to be an inferior configuration for the majority of diving that is done in the world as well as equipment configuration compromises that result from it.
Right now, I maintain that I believe primary donate is a superior configuration and I use it whenever possible. When I am not able to use it, I am with divers where the odds of "the worst" happening which is being mugged for the primary is so near 0 that it isn't worth thinking about. It leads me to make compromises in what I want to dive at times, particularly with the double hose if I believe that I'll be in the water with people that I don't trust, but it's worth it to me to not have to worry.
I was trained from day 1 in primary donate. I have never been trained in any other sort of OOG scenario other than primary donate.
I was taught, and still teach, the following arguments for primary donate.
1. Most important, you know without a doubt, that the regulator in your mouth is breathable. This is both that it functions as expected, and also is providing a breathable gas. Most common reason for failing to function would be some sort of debris stuck in the exhaust valve that will cause the diver to suck water and likely cause panic.
2. Experience says that a truly panicked diver will grab a working regulator from your mouth, so you are hoping for the best, but planning for the worst. If diver is panicking or on the verge of panic, then see point #1. The last thing you want is to hand them a regulator with a compromised exhaust valve because that first big breath in will more than likely cause a panic if they are on the edge.
The process we teach for primary donate, and is the standard for how it should be taught, is for you to switch to your secondary and validate function before you fully release the primary. This lets you check function and if you are well practiced, is done typically in less time than it takes most divers to fumble around and grab their octo. Under normal circumstances, you have more than enough time to swap because you can see it coming. If you don't, well you planned for the worst which was to have someone mug your primary and it's already gone. If the exhaust valve is not working properly, you've been trained on how to breathe from a freeflowing regulator and deal with that at least until you can get it fixed. You may not know if that other person has been trained on how to breathe from a reg with a failed exhaust diaphragm and then you circle back to inducing panic.
Once every few years, we have someone with some sort of health issue where we don't want to use primary donate either with them donating, or them receiving. You deal with it, but it's an exception and there are workarounds. The important takeaway is that with primary donate we are planning for the worst, but hoping for the best. If there is any real risk that someone is going to mug you for your regulator, which I have had happen from divers that I was not buddied with and others in this thread have indicated as well, then it makes sense to plan for that and work accordingly.
Current struggles.
Most of my diving these days is not compatible with primary donate. I'm on a rebreather, I'm on my double hose, or I'm in OC sidemount.
Sidemount can be somewhat strategic to facilitate primary donate for most of the dive. You ALWAYS start the dive on the long hose. This is a very likely time for someone to need gas right as they get in the water. In a cave, as you near the turnaround point, you ALWAYS are on the long hose. For whatever reason that seems to be a fun time for regs to fail, don't know why, but it is what it is. You ALWAYS finish the dive on your long hose. Less important in a cave, but especially in OW, as you start getting close to the end of the dive, people are most likely to run out of gas. If you are on stages or deco bottles, then primary donate works as well. This strategy with your gas switching on sidemount allows you to comply with primary donate during the highest risk portions of the dive, and you hope that the other diver asks nicely for your gas. If they ask nicely, you have more than enough time to unclip, take a breath or two to check function and clear the housing since we are nice and consider divers, and off you go.
Double hose is one of those things that I just really enjoy when I dive single tanks in OW and it's personal preference. I am aware they used to teach buddy breathing on them, but for all intents and purposes it is not a configuration where primary donate is going to happen. That said, we will treat this exactly the same as we would a rebreather where you aren't going to pass the loop over for a myriad of reasons.
In the DIR oriented mentality, it is argued to teach primary donate from day 1 because it is scalable through all levels of diving. For DIR diving where sidemount historically has not been something that was accepted and where rebreathers were left for a very select few divers for select projects, it was something so rare that it wasn't worth trying to reinvent the wheel. In BSAC however, CCR's were much more prevalent early on and that is one of the arguments for not working with primary donate because it is not scalable to rebreathers.
If we look at how the GUE rebreathers are set up, you have a "normal" set of doubles, and to donate you unclip the long hose, take the loop out of your mouth and switch to secondary, then bring loop back to your mouth. This is utterly obnoxious with OTS or TOS counterlungs, but on the RB80 with the bellows and the JJ with BMCL's, it's not that big of a deal. When you have that level of diver though, especially in a cave, you aren't going to get mugged. You'll see the light signals, and if they don't signal, you'll still see them turn around if you're in the back or have to turn around yourself if you're up front while they chase you down. Either way, in technical diving because of the lights and limited number of divers in the water, you can usually see it coming.
So the conundrum is how to handle what I truly believe to be a superior configuration for the vast majority of diving, and how to apply that to the diving that I'm currently doing where it can't work. The conundrum is where you place your priority and what you're willing to sacrifice. On one hand, I can prioritize what I feel to be a better way to dive and use that whenever I can. The sacrifice there is that I have to say that scalability of a single donation method from basic open water up through rebreather is less important than the benefits of consistency in training and methods at all levels of diving and all equipment configurations. On the other hand, I can prioritize that scalability and consistency which ultimately leads to what I believe to be an inferior configuration for the majority of diving that is done in the world as well as equipment configuration compromises that result from it.
Right now, I maintain that I believe primary donate is a superior configuration and I use it whenever possible. When I am not able to use it, I am with divers where the odds of "the worst" happening which is being mugged for the primary is so near 0 that it isn't worth thinking about. It leads me to make compromises in what I want to dive at times, particularly with the double hose if I believe that I'll be in the water with people that I don't trust, but it's worth it to me to not have to worry.
I am interested in how you dive the side mount rig, (never having done this myself).
You state that the start of the dive you are on the long hose, and that you are on the long hose at the turn point, and as you exit the cave, or toward the end of the dive, you are back on the long hose.
This appears similar to independent twins, where you enter on the long hose and do a switch very early, say at the bottom of the shot.
Enter on Long hose - switch (to short hose) at the bottom of the shot
Short hose - switch back at 150bar (to long hose)
Long hose - switch back at 100bar (to short hose) .. (turn point probably around 125 for open water dive)
short hose - switch back at 75 bar (to long hose). .. ( dive end towards 75 bar)
(The turn points are very dependent on what the plan is and how much redundancy will be needed)
I have been that diver that did the switch from the long hose at 100bar, only to find the short hose regulator compromised.
(Thats when I decided to only dive manifolded twins for serious dives.)
I find it slightly disappointing that so many people who use primary donate appear to have difficulty adapting to other techniques.
From a personal point of view, I must have been very lucky, those GUE/primary donate divers I have dived with have never had a problem adapting to diving with me.When I have been on CCR and primary donate is not an option.
Having dived independent twins, and with others diving independents, I have always expected to take the long hose, either from the shoulder bungy, or as PD, dependent on where it happened to be in my hour of need.
The one occasion where it all did go horribly wrong, I tapped my buddy on the shoulder and he handed over the long hose reg'. Initially, he though I was doing a drill, it was only when we transferred over to travel mix at the first stop, that he finally understood I had a proper issue. Goes to prove the best planned dives can go to ****.
As you say, things always go wrong at the worst point, one thing is never the issue it's when things cascade.
Interestingly, I was originally taught that a regulator being remove from your mouth would only occur if the diver panicked. Also, when donating, always to ensure the donated regulator was in the direct eye line to the OOA diver, obscuring your regulator. This reduced the risk of the diver taking your regulator from your mouth in panic.
Gareth
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