Near miss diving doubles for 2nd time

[Garth]

It should be clear in the predive that bolting to the surface should never happen. Being prepared for an OOA diver should be everyones responsibility including the students. Don't understand what the big fuss is about the manifold drills. They are supposed to save your life so you don't have to bolt to the surface. I think this should be clear as well. The whole point is to save as much gas as possible...

 

[dumpsterDiver]

..... At the time, I was headed face down to depth, had lost a fin, was hyperventilating badly, and had 0 situational awareness due to the flooded mask. I was basically a blind person hoping that I was continuing to head downward and not up. I only know that my attempt to arrest my descent had worked because the instructor told me that I had been descending and was headed for the floor, which was around 50-60ft (the bottom was basically a stepped incline from depth). I did not know that the reason I started to ascend was that he had filled my wing... at the time I had actually thought that I hadn't successfully bled enough air from my wing (basically that my attempt at self arrest had failed), and that I was headed to the surface as a result.

This would actually be pretty funny to watch, if it wasn't so serious.

It sounds like you sorta did get things together by madly swimming with one leg downward. However, once the instructor took control of the student, connected the inflator hose, inflated his BC and then iniated the ascent, then it seems that the instructor was driving the train at this point in time.

Based on the stated dive profiles, the probablity of the bends was negligible, but the possibility that you might get an AGE Air Embolism is quite high. Therefore, if I were in the instructors position, i would have "rode" you to the surface. i would have been working your Bc, i would have never allowed you to separate from me, and I hope that I would have been able to modulate our expanding wing volumes to allow a resonably safe ascent rate. At this point in the CF, blowing to the surface really wasn't the student's fault since he was paniced and blind and incapable of dealing with the situation.

As I think about it more, if you were REALLY freaking out, I wouldn't even have messed with your Bc inflator hose connection, I would have simply grabbed your ass and taken you to the surface with MY BC immediately (and at a safe rate).

Incidentally, this accident was initiated partially because you were terrified of blowing to the surface, so much so that you would literally swim blindly toward the bottom. If the OP had been taught to lay on his back, flare out and assume the spread eagle position when initially confronted with an excess bouyancy problem, he probably could have handled the ascent with little drama. If the diver is laid out on their back and presents that much surface area, the drag is so high that the ascent rate is slowed a lot. Probably just as important, this puts the inflate/deflate hose in the optimal position for dumping gas. The diver is more likley to be cpable of locating the large inflator hose (and it's deflate button) in an emergency compared to a little string hanging on the rear dump (with numb, shaking hands).

Obviously, a tech diver should know how to use their gear, but if the OP was confident that s/he could do this emergency response, things probably would not have spiraled into a life or death situation, with the student requiring assistance to survive the day.

p.s. Glad to hear the instructor had oxygen available.. wonder what he was saving it for???

 

[TSandM]

With regards to the OOA while doing a valve drill . . . I think a lot of us have done this. I know I have. But the point about the instructor being ready with a regulator is a good one -- also, we always did the drills as a team, and part of the team function was to watch your buddy's sequence and STOP him if he began to turn off all his gas. In fact, I know of an extremely experienced and superbly skilled diver who got a provisional in his Fundies class, simply because he failed to do this.

But again, a lot of us have done it. And what do you do when you turn off all your own gas? One of two things. Either you shrug and turn it back on again, or you signal your buddy for gas while you solve the problem. You don't bolt. Someone planning on incurring a decompression obligation can't afford to bolt -- can't afford to have bolting anywhere in the top 10 immediate answers to a problem. This is one of the reasons I said I wondered if the students in this class are ready to do it. The best answer to out of gas in the presence of two buddies and an instructor is one of THEM, not the surface.

I vividly remember the first time I turned all my own gas off (it wasn't the last). I had a brand new buddy, someone with whom I had never dived before and didn't know well. I had dropped my head during the valve turning (another no-no) so I didn't see what he was doing, and when I drew off the dead regulator, I discovered my buddy wasn't even looking at me. I had two choices -- turn on my gas, or hope I could get his attention, and that he would be facile enough with donation to get gas to me smoothly. Not knowing him well, and knowing I can hold my breath long enough to swim 75 feet (because I had to do it for one of my classes) I knew I had time to turn on my own gas, so I did.

THAT's the kind of thinking response you need to tech dive. And yes, it does come with practice -- but I think before you take this kind of training, you should have enough diving experience to have dealt with problems underwater and to have developed some poise.

I remember a story from a few years back, about a guy who bolted in his cave class, because he realized he was 900 feet from the entrance and he panicked. The consensus was that anybody who could do that wasn't ready for cave training, if they ever would be. There's a temperament prerequisite for putting yourself under an overhead, whether that's rock or decompression obligation.

 

[Garth]

Simplegreen. Has anything been said if the class will continue?

 

[zaberman1]

SmplGreen, I just read through the entire thread and am quite disturbed.

1. Your profile information and posts on this thread suggest you are a very seasoned recreational diver and certified professional. If you intend on completing your technical course, it is absolutely CRUCIAL you take baby steps and not 'skip ahead.' I believe this experience taught you, and hopefully will teach future divers, this lesson.
2. As a professional, you are should be well aware that 'critical' skill are taught in shallow water first and progressively build up in difficulty/depth. The conditions you describe are astonishing for a first tech course dive. What did your pool session entail? Did you perform buoyancy checks? S-Drills? Anything? Classroom? Briefing?
3. I do not mean to offend you but I believe that you had a very very serious misstep in judgement. You are right to suggest that no one is perfect and I believe we all made mistakes in the past but you really need to evaluate whether or not you should continue the course at this point and time. You should read through your text, skim through the board, and participate in more open water doubles dives. Since it is cold where you are, purchase a drysuit and gain experience diving in that before you try doubles. Tech diving requires contingency planning, planned deco, and extended diving. Doing the dives in a wetsuit is a TERRIBLE idea and one you should have realized before the dive. Tech diving is not something to just 'jump into.'
4. In addition to your mistakes, the instructor certainly made some foolish errors. I refuse, and condemn, instructors operating under the delusion that they have never done stupid things before. Seriously though, teaching a tech class requires much more perfection and experience than displayed in yours. You should have prepared your equipment for the instructor to see BEFORE arriving at the dive site, dove in shallow water (or pool) to work out buoyancy issues, practice staging, etc.

There is so much more to say and learn but I really have to get back to studying...

 

[Thalassamania]

I don't believe that every instructor deserves to teach at the tech level.

 

[Lobzilla]

SmpleGreen,

Thanks for sharing this experience. There are few stories that convey so vividly how we can get ourselves in real trouble.

Since I have logged roughly one tenth of your dives I am in no position to make suggestions about your future diving. However, if you would come to me for advanced training as a pilot and would tell me a story like this, the first thing I would do is to make sure you got the 'right stuff' psychologically.

Instead of whipping out the folder with ink blotches, let me just summarize the rules of the environment we are dealing with.

When we dive or take to the skies, the next hour of our life is not granted by default, it has to be earned. Once we put our head under water, two clocks start ticking against us: the OOA clock and the hypothermia clock. Once we exceed a certain depth/time combination a third one, the deco clock, starts ticking. Now, there are already 3 things that are going to hurt or kill us unless we (not the instructor or anyone else) actively prevent those factors from harming us. As you go into tech diving, it only gets worse. This is the reality of our hobby and no glossy DVD about the fun of diving is going to change that.

The mental response to this realization should be: Know your enemies and respect them. Do not make more enemies (steel tanks and wetsuit without redundant BC or shallow bottom). When more enemies appear unannounced (leaking mask) defeat them or retreat, re-group, and re-attack later.

The really scary part in your story starts when you realized the danger of earlier decisions and did not immediately (!) do anything about it. If, or when, our initial judgment fails us, we need critical assertiveness more than skills to get ourselves out of that pickle.

The death by "continued VFR flight into IFR conditions" cited in earlier posts is a failure on two fronts. For once, the pilot should not have gone there in the first place. But worse yet, the pilot "continued" once he realized the lapse of his previous judgment.

Your story shows the same: naive risk assessment followed by passively giving in to the self-inflicted conditions. You have to break out of this 'dumb sheep mode' between your ears or you will get hurt sooner or later.

In your case, peer pressure was a contributing factor. You had the right idea to abort but you didn't execute it - twice. Whether you are diving with your instructor, Jarrod Jablonski, or the Pope, if you have identified an imminent threat to your life (e.g. inability to control depth, hypothermia) you thumb. If any one of these dignitaries ignores your thumb, they should get the 'bird' and you proceed with saving your life.

Listen to Capt. Sullenberger's communication with New York TRACON before the ‘Miracle of the Hudson’ here. "We take the Hudson" conveys conviction and assertiveness gaining control of an understandable level of dismay. Sully could only capitalize on his excellent flying skills by quickly coming up with an executable option and executing it without 'but and if'.

While a better instructor and/or a stronger team would be helpful, ultimately it is you who has to mentally take the forces you are messing with more seriously. More critical pessimism before your dives and more follow-through when you need to get yourself out of harm’s way.

 

[TSandM]

Very nice post, Lobzilla.

The mental response to this realization should be: Know your enemies and respect them. Do not make more enemies (steel tanks and wetsuit without redundant BC or shallow bottom). When more enemies appear unannounced (leaking mask) defeat them or retreat, re-group, and re-attack later.

This is the concept of the "incident pit". The new gear and the inadequate exposure protection took the diver to the edge of the pit . . . the failure to abort took him deeper into it, where buoyancy issues and a flooded mask nearly made an accident report out of him. The secret to staying out of the pit is to identify smaller issues early and act decisively to correct them or abort the dive before they can spiral into a mess.

 

[SmpleGreen]

Lobzilla.... I think that is an excellent take away from this incident. While it is difficult to admit, I was definitely in "dumb sheep mode".

One of the more difficult things about being in a class environment is that you put a certain amount of implicit authority and trust into the hands of someone else. There is an automatic assumption that the teacher knows more than the student, reinforced in this case by how many new things I was trying at once.

I had asked the instructor a ton of questions about gear setup and how I should configure my different pieces of gear (I have streamlined most of my gear on my jacket bc setup... on the doubles rig I had Christmas tree syndrome going on big time, and kept asking the instructor to help me minimize the number of items that were hanging from D-rings.

I also frequently asked follow up questions during our dive briefings, or for a more detailed explanation if I didn't understand exactly how we were going to do something underwater. I know enough from past experience that it is a lot easier (and safer) to clear up any confusion or misinterpretation above water than below. In addition, I would sometimes ask why we weren't doing it another way....or whether there was a better alternative.

So I don't generally have a problem questioning authority, as most people who know me will tell you (the above are lame examples....but trust me). However, during this dive, I felt a little boxed in. I knew the other two student divers were not going to ascend with me, and I definitely did not feel comfortable going off to find the line by myself and doing an ascent alone. As I have mentioned previously, I probably should have tapped the instructor when he headed off in a direction away from the line, and motioned that I wanted to head to the line to ascend. That was the key point where I decided to go into sheep mode instead of being assertive and taking control of the situation. My internal thought process was "everyone is already headed that way, and it is going to take a lot of effort to catch the instructor and motion to turn everyone around, when I don't even know where the line is.... maybe the instructor is taking us to a different line to ascend from).

Your analogy of Captain Sullenberger is apt in that it ties into what many other people have been saying, and that is that I need more experience with diving the gear before I get into deep diving with doubles + stage bottle. If Captain Sullenberger was on his second real flight out of flight school when that incident happened, it is likely he would have done what the tower told him to do. While part of his assertiveness was clearly personality driven, another part was having enough experience and flight time to conclude with conviction that he wasn't going to make it to the airport, and that his best option of the many undesirable ones was to land in the Hudson.

Thanks again to everyone for their valuable feedback (as humbling as some of it may be). These are the kinds of insights that I think are truly valuable from these incidents, and hopefully will allow others to avoid making the same mistakes I did on this dive.

 

[SmpleGreen]

2. As a professional, you are should be well aware that 'critical' skill are taught in shallow water first and progressively build up in difficulty/depth. The conditions you describe are astonishing for a first tech course dive. What did your pool session entail? Did you perform buoyancy checks? S-Drills? Anything? Classroom? Briefing?
3. I do not mean to offend you but I believe that you had a very very serious misstep in judgement. You are right to suggest that no one is perfect and I believe we all made mistakes in the past but you really need to evaluate whether or not you should continue the course at this point and time. You should read through your text, skim through the board, and participate in more open water doubles dives. Since it is cold where you are, purchase a drysuit and gain experience diving in that before you try doubles. Tech diving requires contingency planning, planned deco, and extended diving. Doing the dives in a wetsuit is a TERRIBLE idea and one you should have realized before the dive. Tech diving is not something to just 'jump into.'
4. In addition to your mistakes, the instructor certainly made some foolish errors. I refuse, and condemn, instructors operating under the delusion that they have never done stupid things before. Seriously though, teaching a tech class requires much more perfection and experience than displayed in yours. You should have prepared your equipment for the instructor to see BEFORE arriving at the dive site, dove in shallow water (or pool) to work out buoyancy issues, practice staging, etc.

I thought that this was clear from my posts, but I suppose some of the information has been piecemeal throughout the thread. This dive to 90ft was not my first tech dive, although it was my first to any substantial depth.

In terms of classroom work.....
As this was a class, we had a full day of classroom (approx 12-7) before going diving the next day. I had never been to the quarry we were diving (which was 4.5 hours away from where I live), and had no idea what the temperatures would be there. I didn't even know where we were diving until the day of the class (the original plan had been to dive at a closer quarry the first day, followed by a lake the following day, but the location was changed).

Here is the sequence of dives that I went through before the one being discussed...

I had taken the rig to the pool 2 days before the first dive of the course for approximately 2 hours, and had practiced buoyancy, ascending and descending with the rig, taking on and off the deco bottle, etc. I should note that the tanks I dove in the pool were not the same ones I used in the class. The dive shop switched them out for a different set, which I believe were heavier/larger than the ones I was diving in the pool.

The first day of the class we did three dives, all with a max depth of around 30 ft. Two were done at a quarry platform where we practiced skills. The other was a swim at 33 ft to calculate our SAC rate. I used the first dive to decide on some gear changes, including going and renting a pair of ankle weights, as my feet were literally floating above my head when hanging on the line to do a safety stop before ascending. We practiced many drills, including valve isolation drills (turning off tanks and turning them back on to isolate free flows and busted O rings), flooding our mask and having our buddy swim us around the platform, and sharing our primary reg with our buddy and switching to our secondary reg, then swimming together.

All of these drills went off smoothly (with the exception of the ooa situation discussed earlier with the other diver...which was eventually repeated and done correctly).

My buoyancy control was fine at 30-40 ft, and I felt comfortable with the rig at this depth.

It should be noted that the temperature change between the top 40-50ft of the quarry and below were huge. I of course expected a thermocline, but there is a big difference between 62F at 40 feet and 40F at 90-100 feet. I was not prepared for this level of temperature change, and there hadn't been any indication that my wetsuit was inappropriate for these temperatures (I didn't know the temperature at the bottom would be 40F).

Some people (friends of the instructor who were diving the quarry) had made cracks that I was "brave" for going in the quarry with a wetsuit, but no one said that the suit was inappropriate for the temperature. Another student was diving in a wetsuit as well, but he had a full 8mm in addition to a vest, so I think in total he had core protection up to around 11mm, with full 8mm for extremities. This was compared to my 7 mm core and 5mm for extremities. This had been fine at 62F for our dives the previous day. It was, of course, way too thin for 40F.