Hutchel
Registered
I thought I would post this after reading some of the other out of air incidents as another lesson learned.
This happened on our last day of a week of diving in Cancun summer '05 - My wife and I had just finished our OW certification (we finished Rescue Diver a couple of weeks ago).
We were diving on C-55 with a large group - 3 different DM lead groups. My wife and I had our own DM who had been our instructor all week. BTW we thought he was excellent.
When the boat got to the location it tied up to the wreck Bouy/line and we suited up. The DMs had a disagreement about descent procedures because the tide was running pretty strong - ours wanted to treat it as a drift dive to the wreck (i.e. enter the water up current and use the current to bring us to the proper spot) while the other DMs wanted to descend on the line. The other DMs apparently were not comfortable with their divers and won out. I think we were the 2nd group in.
It turned out the current was STRONG. They had a line that ran along the side of the boat in the water and we literally had to pull hand over hand up to the bouy and then descend hand over hand. It was HARD work - breathing on the reg the whole time. Well it turns out somewhere along the way my Octo flipped over in the current and started to free flow. In our group I was last on the line and my bubbles where immediately going behind me along with all the other turbulance - I didn't have a clue anything was wrong. Not only that but after only 5-10 mins in the water I hadn't bothered to check the SPG. *** OK THIS IS THE BIG MISTAKE ***
Well after descending about 15-20' the instructer well below me turns around to check on us and sees the 2nd stream of bubbles and ascends to me checks me gage as he gets to me and pulls his Octo and hands it to me - I look at him strangly and look at my SPG - 500 lbs. Ok so I take it and he readjusts my octo and we head back the surface switch tanks and try again. The Octo tries it again but we are both sensitive to the issue and catch it immediately and have the dive w/o futher issue. Turns out my wife and DM also had the same issue - My wife's just righted itself quicker as did the DM's - the DM does not breath underwater apparently - he was using one tank to my our 3 or 4 all week so he still had plenty of air left. She had to come back up shortly after getting to the wreck. BTW our DM had her descend with another DM after we left. Everyone stayed calm and it all turned out well.
Needless to say the shortly after entering the water SPG check is now part of my checklist. I also gave the DM a healthy tip for the week - he caught it - not me.
It was a bit of a wake up after a week of completely uneventful diving for the OW course with just my wife and the Instructor. Overall I thought a great learning experience that didn't kill me
Lee
This happened on our last day of a week of diving in Cancun summer '05 - My wife and I had just finished our OW certification (we finished Rescue Diver a couple of weeks ago).
We were diving on C-55 with a large group - 3 different DM lead groups. My wife and I had our own DM who had been our instructor all week. BTW we thought he was excellent.
When the boat got to the location it tied up to the wreck Bouy/line and we suited up. The DMs had a disagreement about descent procedures because the tide was running pretty strong - ours wanted to treat it as a drift dive to the wreck (i.e. enter the water up current and use the current to bring us to the proper spot) while the other DMs wanted to descend on the line. The other DMs apparently were not comfortable with their divers and won out. I think we were the 2nd group in.
It turned out the current was STRONG. They had a line that ran along the side of the boat in the water and we literally had to pull hand over hand up to the bouy and then descend hand over hand. It was HARD work - breathing on the reg the whole time. Well it turns out somewhere along the way my Octo flipped over in the current and started to free flow. In our group I was last on the line and my bubbles where immediately going behind me along with all the other turbulance - I didn't have a clue anything was wrong. Not only that but after only 5-10 mins in the water I hadn't bothered to check the SPG. *** OK THIS IS THE BIG MISTAKE ***
Well after descending about 15-20' the instructer well below me turns around to check on us and sees the 2nd stream of bubbles and ascends to me checks me gage as he gets to me and pulls his Octo and hands it to me - I look at him strangly and look at my SPG - 500 lbs. Ok so I take it and he readjusts my octo and we head back the surface switch tanks and try again. The Octo tries it again but we are both sensitive to the issue and catch it immediately and have the dive w/o futher issue. Turns out my wife and DM also had the same issue - My wife's just righted itself quicker as did the DM's - the DM does not breath underwater apparently - he was using one tank to my our 3 or 4 all week so he still had plenty of air left. She had to come back up shortly after getting to the wreck. BTW our DM had her descend with another DM after we left. Everyone stayed calm and it all turned out well.
Needless to say the shortly after entering the water SPG check is now part of my checklist. I also gave the DM a healthy tip for the week - he caught it - not me.
It was a bit of a wake up after a week of completely uneventful diving for the OW course with just my wife and the Instructor. Overall I thought a great learning experience that didn't kill me
Lee
