New Experience in Pond

[Don Burke]

This analogy was taught to me by an instructor I admire very much.. Think of a Soda bottle when you shake it up... Thats youre tissues at depth on gassing.. Now think of taking the cap off of the soda bottle very slowly.. That your tissues off gassing on a controlled accent..

Now think of taking that cap of VERY FAST... That would be your tissues exploding on an uncontrolled accent.. next step... You are bent.....

That was a demonstration of decompression sickness.

Embolism would be taking the bottle to depth, filling it with gas and then bringing it to the surface, where it would distend and perhaps rupture.

The two conditions are somewhat similar, but certainly not the same.

 

[Gary D.]

av8er23, I apologise for having given advice as to how I would have tried to slavage the jeep. I surely didn't want you to get killed trying. Maybe I'm a dying breed. But if my 16 year old son told me all he had to do was find and pull a jeep out of a pond and it would be his?..."go for it son". I'm sure he could pull it off safely. Everyone is talking about how dangerous the pond is....well, it's a wonder I'm still alive because I must have swam in about 20 of them growing up..not to mention jumping off bridges into rivers and creeks....building tree houses that were 80 feet off the ground, a swing that was 90. I swear, if I'd joined SB before I started diving, I probably wouldn't have started with all the posts about dying...America has changed.

I think your missing the point.

The pond is not dangerous, neither is the Jeep, tree, suspended matter, or anything else in it. The most dangerous thing in this operation is the gray matter at the top of the human carrying it into the operation.

By his own admission he was on the edge of some real serous problems. The way it was described indicated that he was not far from a panic. Would he have panicked? Nobody knows but it sounds like there was a real threat.

30 years ago I would have told him to go for it with a basic OW certification. But the sport has been divided up so bad that you now have to spend a lot of bucks and take a lot of classes to get the same open water certification of yesteryear.

My wife has MS and has her AOW. 30 years ago she would have failed basic OW in the first day or two.

This sport has changed and a sport diver needs to stay a sport diver until the proper training is obtained for something else.

Like you I built the tall tree houses. My early years were on a dairy farm so our swimming pool was a not so clean smelling pond. I built a rocket that took me for a ride down the street and almost killed me not to mention several years of racing flat-track motorcycles. Sure we explored as kids and did a lot of things that could injure or kill us but age should bring wisdom. Wisdom should bring more safety into our lives.

This country has a wide variety of salvage laws. Those laws need to be researched prior to any recovery and “It’s mine” attitude. Here in Idaho you can go to jail for doing just that. Lost property, in the water or not, belongs to the original owner who lost it.

Gary D.

 

[FredT]

How are you suppose to keep up with each other in these conditions? I know it is not good but is it very likely that you could get an embolism from this depth?

The best way to keep track of a buddy in low vis is with a buddy line. In a farm pond the buddy line should be long enough to reach the bank your buddy is standing on. In Braille conditions a buddy with you in the water often adds unnecessary risk. A tender with a good line pull code and a stand-by diver enhances safety, since the stand-by will be warned about what to expect by your line pulls.

As far as an embolism goes in the old days the term was "17 seconds." That is how long it takes the bubbles in your lungs grow in the heart and to reach your brain when you stand up with full lungs and a closed airway from lying on the bottom in 4' of water. That is also how long you'll live, or at least live as you have been used to living, unless you have a chamber on deck. 4' of pressure difference will break 10% of the air chambers in your lungs, with about half of the breaks being under capillaries injecting air directly in to the pulmonary vein.

BTW the only way to beat the beast in your head is to make him your friend. Learn from him, at the point he first starts to twinge, where your limits are. From there you can teach him what to ignore where your limits need to be stretched. This is best done slowly over a large number of dives.

FT

 

[Rick Inman]

I built a rocket that took me for a ride down the street and almost killed me ...

Really?? Makes me wonder if your pen name is Patrick McManus.

 

[Gary D.]

Really?? Makes me wonder if your pen name is Patrick McManus.

I love his books

It was that stunt that charted my path through life.

I built it as a school project and jumped the gun on a test firing. It blew the back out of the rocket body, inserted itself into my right leg and off we went.

Over the next 6 months I had gone into surgery to have it amputated just below the hip. They didn’t remove it but I was told I would never walk again. Then it was, We can save it but you’re going to have a bad limp. Later it was the limp won’t be bad but you will never run again. This went on and on for months.

Being a snotty nose hell raising kid I was going to put up a fight. It worked. My determination was to show all those MD’s they were wrong. By the way, they only PRACTICE medicine.

It’s a long story but after some triumphs and defeats I became a Navy Diver. After graduation I went to the hospital, in uniform, and very proudly displayed not only the uniform but that little divers helmet on my sleeve.

I was one of the lucky ones that have survived those real stupid stunts. This is only one of dozens I pulled. My Mom could have been very rich had she not had me or married a doctor.

I was a sport diver prior to the Navy so at least I knew I would love it. I cut my teeth in the Santa Cruz / Monterey area when everything was open for diving. I don’t go back very often but a lot of our old diving spots are now restricted which sucks.

Being a wild kid can go either way. Mine just happened to end up very well with the help of at least one very active, very exhausted Guardian Angel.

Gary D.

 

[UnixSage]

If it is truely 30-40 feet.. Drop the scuba stuff and swim/freedive down. Might take 2 dives. One to figure out the direction of the jeep and decide what is the best direction do pull it out and the other is to actully hook it up.. I have recovered boats, motors and other things this way.. I can usually do this < 60 feet. I agree with the person that did not want to subject his scuba gear to that enviroment.

Edit: AFTER you found it with some sinker and rope...

Just my 2 cents

 

[av8er23]

If it is truely 30-40 feet.. Drop the scuba stuff and swim/freedive down. Might take 2 dives. One to figure out the direction of the jeep and decide what is the best direction do pull it out and the other is to actully hook it up.. I have recovered boats, motors and other things this way.. I can usually do this < 60 feet. I agree with the person that did not want to subject his scuba gear to that enviroment.

Edit: AFTER you found it with some sinker and rope...

Just my 2 cents

There is no way I can free dive this far and plus do you just swim down to the bottom as fast as possible you are guanarteed to run into something.

 

[teknitroxdiver]

If it is truely 30-40 feet.. Drop the scuba stuff and swim/freedive down. Might take 2 dives. One to figure out the direction of the jeep and decide what is the best direction do pull it out and the other is to actully hook it up.. I have recovered boats, motors and other things this way.. I can usually do this < 60 feet. I agree with the person that did not want to subject his scuba gear to that enviroment.

Edit: AFTER you found it with some sinker and rope...

Just my 2 cents

And when he gets tangled up? Now you've got a body recovery instead of just a jeep recovery.

 

[Rick Inman]

Being a wild kid can go either way. Mine just happened to end up very well with the help of at least one very active, very exhausted Guardian Angel.

Gary D.

...who is still working overtime!! :11:

Good story, Gary. Nice to learn a little bit more about you.

 

[UnixSage]

And when he gets tangled up? Now you've got a body recovery instead of just a jeep recovery.

I guess that is possible, I have never come close. I am saying keep it very simple. Down and up. I have only scuba diving for a few months but I have been "freediving" for 20 Years. I highly doubt there will be a gill-net in a farm pond but none the less you make a valid point. I guess I am lucky all the times I jumped over the side of a conoe holding a rock going to a 100ft in a Lake in canada. Trees and stuff on the bottom there. Dark too I am way to out of shape to be pulling that now but I would do a 30-40 ft dive like this almost without thinking just a swimsuit and a mask, total bottom Time 20-30 seconds...

YMMV
Thanks