johndiver999
Contributor
Sounds great until your buddy does the same. LOL
Made an out of gas ascent today
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Boarderguy
Chief Narctopus Wrangler
At that point I grab double 100s and hope they don't do the same lol... my normal buddy only has 80s and a single 100. The other buddy I go with occasionally has 100s and a single 130. The 2nd now slings a 30 so I wouldn't play the +1 game and would just dive my 119 + pony.
I see double 149's if this continues......
My twin set has NO isolator valve.
I always considered it more dangerous than useful.
On the other side, my twin set has a Technisub spring-loaded reserve.
This is substantially like having 1/4 of the total capacity in a separate pony tank, which is not lost in case of a free-flowing reg (or an extruded yoke O-ring) and a slow reaction closing its valve.
L13
Contributor
Given the dive profile, this was an NDL dive with an ongoing emergency (lost diver), furthermore you were not even close to the NDL limit. ALL safety stops are optional (not required deco stops), and should have been skipped in the interest of handling the emergency. And ascent rates should have been the maximum safe rate (not the conservative rate).The standard min-deco is what I describe in the second dive. Our plan was to follow this and add an extra minute at 20 ft (effectively, 2 min at 20 and 1 min at 10, which will clear a standard safety stop).
Speaking for myself, I was slow because (a) I haven't been in the water for over a month, so I'm rusty and (b) I was ascending with a lot of extra weight in the form of two full tanks on my back, which increases the difficulty. My priorities are team, depth, time, in that order. Contrary to popular belief, divers are not perfect machines who can always execute flawlessly.
Skipping the extra minute at 20 ft was not part of the plan, but I felt it was reasonable as there was some urgency to confirm our teammate was okay, particularly when we hadn't really spent any time on the bottom. However, it didn't make sense to argue over it at the time. We discussed afterwards, and my buddy agreed.
But, to be honest, I may not have done any better if I had been in the same situation. Having read your post and thought about it, I am more likely to do better in the future. So, Thank You!
Skipping "safety stops" during an air-sharing ascent seems to be what the greater dive community advises, but if I understand correctly, GUE doesn't teach it quite that way. GUE's way of ascending from a normal recreational dive--their so-called "minimum deco ascent"--is to stop at half your maximum depth for 30 seconds, then stop every 10 feet for another 30 seconds, taking 30 seconds to ascend from each stop to the next. Sceptics might say that, in effect, the "minimum deco ascent" is just an elaborate way (needlessly elaborate?) of breaking up the traditional 30 fpm ascent rate and 3-minute safety stop into multiple, slower segments. Whether there are any benefits to the minimum deco ascent over the traditional ascent with safety stop has been debated.
I believe GUE also teaches that in most air-sharing situations the divers should still be able to ascend in that manner, because they reserved enough gas to do it, and the team is presumably composed of calm, cool and unfazed GUE divers whose training will spring (calmly, of course) into action.
In the story posted here, maybe I am sensing some tension between what GUE teaches and what's recommended in the greater recreational dive community. On a recreational dive where divers are ascending sharing gas, do any conceivable benefits of the minimum deco ascent really outweigh the possible disadvantages? Being trained like this to hit your stops while sharing gas is clearly important where the stops are obligatory deco stops, but does that training being drilled into divers at the recreational level only have the potential to create confusion in the heat of the moment over whether it's better to skip this stop but maybe not that stop?
L13
Contributor
This was not an air-share ascent, it was a lost diver emergency. Does GUE teach the completion of a "minimum deco ascent" in a lost diver scenario?
Or, was there a misunderstanding? My commentary was on the first ascent, yours may be about the second ascent? Maybe we are just talking past each other.
I need to re-read the original post. Maybe I am confusing the two dives.
Whether GUE teaches the completion of a minimum deco ascent in a lost diver scenario is an interesting question. I don't recall exceptions to the minimum deco ascent being taught in my Fundies class. After all, all they're trying to do or have time to do is teach the basics; even in more advanced classes it wouldn't be possible to teach what to do (or omit) in every conceivable scenario. In other words, maybe there are times when the "thinking diver" (and that IS something GUE encourages) deviates from the precise letter of what they did in class. There was a scenario in my Cave 2 course where I reflexively reacted exactly as we had done in Cave 1, and my instructor made a point to the effect that at the Cave 2 level the diver needs to think about the situation at hand rather than react purely reflexively. My point is only that the Fundies class really embeds that minimum deco ascent into students' heads.
Edit: I re-read the original post. I confused the two dives. The first dive, where a team member was thought to be lost, included at least one stop, at 20 feet. On the second dive, the air-sharing ascent was described as "safe and relatively uneventful."
@Lorenzoid i think there is a hidden benefit to do these.
Breaking down like this, helps to wait for each other.
Breaking down like this, helps to wait for each other.
Venting air on the boat to solve a weight problem raised an eyebrow! It works, sure, but I’d have ditched something else. How much does the computer weigh, or any emergency gear he might carry… Also bizarre he didn’t have ANY ditchable weight in the first place: what’s his process for routine buoyancy adjustment?! Just diving heavy and holding extra lift in the BC isn’t quite the end of the world either.
I’m looking at that 03:00 long drive to the coast as the root cause though. That puts a lot of social pressure to make the boat dive work no matter what, and there’s always little problems that crop up. Making the time for a shakedown shore dive before the main event has served me well, and it’s usually pretty fun too.
I’m looking at that 03:00 long drive to the coast as the root cause though. That puts a lot of social pressure to make the boat dive work no matter what, and there’s always little problems that crop up. Making the time for a shakedown shore dive before the main event has served me well, and it’s usually pretty fun too.
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