Not sure if this could have gone bad or not

[Mike Majoris]

Thanks for all the responses, everyone! Glad to have joined this forum, I'm sure you'll all be hearing a lot from me in the coming years.

 

[iamrushman]

nothing like a lifetime of experience after one incident...well done and good luck...

 

[nolatom]

I had a somewhat similar experience early on, though no DM to blame it on, just me. Still, beneath the surface, offshore at night, no reg in my mouth, mask knocked askew so it flooded. Like you, for a couple of seconds my mind raced, but then a voice said, "wait, we covered this in class, instructor Dave had told us, 'if you can breathe, you can solve all your other problems' ". So I swept for a reg, got the octo, then cleared the mask, switched out regs, then surfaced and was relieved that no one else had seem me ;-)

You did much the same, after those first few panic seconds you came up with logical buoyancy-related thoughts, and "regained control of your brain" as you said. It's called "working the problem", and you did it, leaving the panic road behind. Very nice piece of work for a new diver.

 

[chillyinCanada]

Thanks for all the responses, everyone! Glad to have joined this forum, I'm sure you'll all be hearing a lot from me in the coming years.

Looking forward to it!

 

[Rich Keller]

You did everything right. I would say you weren't even paniced just momentarily startled. The only way you could have avoided this would have been to have more situational awareness of what was going on around you. That will come with time and is in no way a criticism of someone with only 14 dives.

 

[johndiver999]

Agree with the above, The only criticism I could generate would be a failure to fully understand that the situation really was very dangerous (afterwards). Getting dragged to the surface, fast, from a shallow depth is potentially life threatening- although if you swear and cuss loud enough during the event, you will probably be spared a lung expansion injury.

A good lesson that lift bags and smb's really can be somewhat hazardous.

 

[FinnMom]

Job one: don't panic, you passed

Job two: secure air, you passed

Job three: exit water safely, you passed

Good for you!!

As long as you'd remembered to exhale slowly (remember aaaaawwww?) to keep your airway open, you'd probably have been OK surfacing from that depth.

Really, if you ever lose your regulator again, this experience will come in handy.

Job four: You chose to see the bright (i.e. learning experience) side of this and didn't make a big ugly deal out of someone else's mistake.
Excellent. Beautiful. Thank you for making the world that much a nicer place.

My dad used to say "Always be nice, be lenient if there is a conflict and you think someone [else] made a mistake. If you are correct and it was their mistake, you can afford to be lenient. If you are wrong and it was actually you that made the mistake, you'll be darn glad you were nice about it".

 

[Tippytoes12]

As the others have said , it’s good that you reflect so carefully.

Most accidents happen at the surface and you were lucky that you weren’t pushed right up. We have dived in Thailand many times and the waters can be so so busy with speedboats and snorkelers , divers going in and coming out of the water and even students doing OW skills on the surface.

Two inexperienced divers should have each other in their sights virtually all the time and definitely at the end of the dive, when you begin to deploy your SMB and do your safety stop. You should both have been at or near the same level. So your buddy didn’t, when she deployed the SMB, know where you were ? Were you particularly aware of where she was ? Neither is good and IMVHO these are the areas you might like to think about improving.