I have put off posting this for awhile. Mostly for personal reasons and privacy, but as divers we have to analyze what goes wrong and how to prevent it. Never in my lifetime would I have thought I would be posting this on the most dreaded forum in this website. However here we go...
My father Jerry Daniel (CMAN), myself and 2 other dives buddies were doing our first lake dives of the year. We were in Lake Huron off Port Sanilac doing a tugboat in 90ft of water. Water temp was 46°.
Dive plan was for the 3 divers (father and his two buddies) to do 1 single tank dive and I would watch the boat. Then do my deco dive on an overturned freighter by myself during their surface interval and hook up mooring lines as they had yet to be put out for the season.
My father was 64, overweight and rarely saw a doctor. His two dives buddies are both in their 60s also. However my father never had any trouble with his health so we didn't have much to worry about on that end.
Great Lakes diving requires drysuits and heavier equipment plus they had on large steel tanks (100s and 120s). Anyways I help my father get geared up and he said now he had to go to the bathroom but he'd wait until after the dive. He gears up and gets in. No problem, he gives me the double tap on head OK signal and waits. His second dive buddy does the same. The third dive buddy jumps in and his dry glove instantly begins to leak.
My father and the one buddy decide to wait at the front of the boat at the mooring line. For a couple minutes I'm messing with this guys cheap ass dry gloves where the fabric keeps wrecking the seal when I hear a bunch of shouting up at the bow. I walk over and see my father who's face is bright red struggling to stay afloat. He says "I cant get any air!" I scream inflate your BC and suit and he just stares at me.
I run to the back of the boat for a dock line and throw it back to him when I get to the bow again. I now know something is seriously wrong as his entire weight is on the dock line. I tell his buddy to keep his head above water and get him to the back of the swim platform and getting up. His head goes under water a few times and I scream for the buddy to keep his head up as I tow him the 34ft to the back. His face is all purple at this point and he is gulping for air.
I shout drop his weights (on a harness) but the buddy apparently didnt hear me. On the back of our boat was a brand new electric dive ladder with a 3×2 platform. The plan was to get him on that and raise him up. The one dive buddy that I was helping get his glove on decided to take his fins off and leave everything else on. Needless to say it turned into a cluster very quick.
Since nobody was listening to what I was saying I jumped in with all my clothes on into the cold water. I dropped his weights and tank and let them sink to the bottom and got onto the lowered platform with my arms locked under his to keeps his head above water. The other dive buddies are trying to push him up and I say get your gear off and and keep your fins on. Finally the one diver who took his fins off gets completely degear'd and I have him hold my father at the back. I rush to the generator to start it up to run the ladder platform. I then jump back in and get him ready to go up.
Unfortunately the weight of 3 people on the ladder causes it to short out and we blow the breaker. At this time my dad went to purple to gray, and I knew he was probably gone. Unfortunately being with older divers and me being the youngest by far, left me as the only one physically capable of getting him back up manually.
I tell the other two to use the regular Christmas tree ladder and get geared down and then help me get him back up. This took about 3 minutes or so. Finally with me standing on the submerged platform and those 2 pulling up, we got him onto the swim platform. I ripped both of my rotator cuffs getting him back into the boat proper. I knew he was gone but I had to try.
I begin CPR and mouth to mouth for approximately 2 minutes. The other two do not know how to start and drive the boat so I have them take over.
A small detail, we had a large oxygen kit onboard. However during the prior season the one dive buddy suffered a heart attack and it was depleted on him. We did not get it back in time for this dove trip.
I get the boat started up and I disconnect from our mooring. I radio a mayday to the CG informing them that we have a diver emergency and need personnel at the dock. We were very fortunate that a boat nearby had an off duty EMT. The boat was a few miles away in the direction in which we were going.
Because of the blown fuse the platform was still submerged but I had no choice but to gun it as I thought every second mattered. Withing 200 yards of gunning it, the platform broke free. We got the main generator started (I used the portable Honda the first time) and lashed it together.
Once again we were underway I got radio chatter that the boat was coming in from port quarter and requested that we slow down so the EMT jumped aboard. With this accomplished I told him that no O2 was onboard but maybe we could use a reg to blast air into his lungs. This was done, the EMT also said that we needed to cut away his drysuit (an expensive one). It took approximately a half hour to reach harbor as we were intercepted by another boat with full paramedic gear and team.
I took the boat into the boat launch were a ambulance was waiting for us. It was difficult with my fathers weight to get him off but they did. The other guys said that they would dock the boat for me and get in my car (soaking wet with my keys and phone ruined), and follow it to the nearest hospital.
While on my way there I used my fathers cell phone to make the most painful phone call to my mother about what happened. 15 minutes later I reach the hospital and they pronounced him deceased. Where once again I had to make another painful phone call to my mother and sister relaying the news.
No autopsy was done, and i used my clout to suppress the story in the papers. I was highly embarrassed as the people who came out to help us were colleagues of mine at the neighboring county sheriffs office. To have another sheriff diver lose his partner in his arms back in 2011 and then his father the same way in 2019 is a humiliation that was hard to bare. As being in public safety I should have been more prepared. I almost left the department after that. But as of now I am still on as the sonar operator.
My father was a donor and they saw that one of his arteries was mostly blocked and they suspect "the widowmaker" or possibly a stomach aneurism. I have not been back in the water since. However I am not hanging up my guns yet
So lessons that I learned:
I will no longer dive with divers older than 55
I will no longer dive with divers that are overweight.
I will not have divers on my boat or go on a boat myself that does not have functioning O2.
This is a repeat of many stories here on this forum of divers thinking that they are still ok to dive even when the risks are mounted against them. I see how many errors were committed by both myself l, my father, and our diving companions.
I hope that all of you reading this know the broken record saying of dive healthy and dive smart. See your doctor regularly especially as we get older. Keep your weight down. Know when it's time to stop. And know or know what to expect of your dive buddies and boat crew when sh!t goes horribly south.
