lost alone in wreck at 45m

[ScubaTexan]

The bottom line:

3. There really isn't anything down there worth dying for. :11:

Excellent story, garf and scoobidoobi! Cheers for sharing it with us. It's a lesson for all of us, no matter how deep or shallow we go.

 

[Gombessa]

Hope that works for you, for me it doesn't always feel so black or white at times......

Exactly. As Lynne mentioned too, this looked like a situation where nobody overtly exceeded their skill level, but still ended up in an out-of-hand situation.

 

[Kevrumbo]

Garf, Drmike's Incident, and the Rouse's Tragedy are three excellent classic case studies for novice and experienced Wreck Divers alike: How a seemingly simple misjudgment or mistake can set in motion a cascading scenario of adversity that you might not be able to recover from. . .

 

[wedivebc]

I got chills reading that account.

 

[Cacia]

I have a question.

What do you think your plan for getting back in the saddle will be?

*conservative dives for awhile

or

* that same dive over as soon as possible?

everybody approaches it differently.

 

[JeffG]

I have a question.

What do you think your plan for getting back in the saddle will be?

*conservative dives for awhile

or

* that same dive over as soon as possible?

everybody approaches it differently.

When I had my ice diving incident, my next dive was under the ice the next weekend.

 

[SlowRain]

I printed it out. An amazing incident which helps me reinforce my decision making when something is amiss enough to simply say "this dive is over now" and not worry what the armchair quarterbacks think or say.

 

[IceBergSlim]

You can make anything dangerous! "Our sport" is very safe if you get the training, experience, and plan your dive and never dive over your skill level! All lesions that should have been listened to before they entered the water, the wreck, or took the next chance with their lives!

I think the issue was a simple dive becoming more complex without the participants making that choice.

A swim around the became a penetration. They were unable to know they were getting deeper into the wreck untill (almost) too late.

 

[ageddiver]

This is a good thread, because I'm not sure anyone can really point to any procedural mistakes made by the divers or even errors in judgement that caused them to wind up in that predicament. A dive light fails, but this was not planned to be a penetration dive and the backup was bright and reliable. They did not run a line, but again they did not plan to be in an overhead environment and had planned to ascend on a bag so getting back to the starting point was not required. They stayed together as they planned.

So what's the lesson? What was the decision they made that got them into trouble? They never thought "let's just duck inside for a minute - it's really close", or "I know it's very deep and I'll be narced but He is expensive" ala the Rouse's. What would YOU have done differently. I don't think I would have done anything differently and that's what makes it interesting. I think any lesson is in what they did AFTER the poop hit the fan and they realized their mistake. They got a grip and reasoned themselves out of trouble (after panicing and getting separated unfortunately). If you dive enough, sooner or later you'll likely find yourself in a pickle despite all your best preparation and that's when you'll need all your wits and confidence to get back. Isn't the lesson something along the lines of "stop, stay calm and think"?

 

[silverfish88]

I can honestly say, as a diver that is just starting to take technical lessons, this is scary as heck. There are many, many points here to think about. Most imporant one is, never believe that a malfunction or mistake is small and can't come back to torture you. I hope I can say that I learned that I will never continue a dive if something goes wrong, no matter how small. This is a great story that I hope reaches many divers and prevents at least one bad outcome by scaring people into aborting a dive if anything happens that you don't expect.