Other rescues...

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LOL...the butt first descents aren't only with new divers either. I had a class doing a safety stop in front of the instructors dock at Gilboa when I was narrowly missed by the entire OMS catalog.
I know a fellow who just started diving about six months ago. He's currently a DM candidate at a local shop. His fellow DMCs call him "The Turtle" ... because his normal way of descending is to fall backward till he lands tank-first on the bottom.

Not coincidentally, he got his instruction at the same shop that Lynne initially did ... :shakehead:

... Bob (Grateful Diver)
 
Met a guy for a dive once ... on your pre-dive interview he told me he had about 80 dives, and about half of them were solo. Told me he'd taken the SDI solo class.
[...]
I suspect the solo class was nothing more than an excuse to sell the guy a pony bottle
One of the prerequisites of the SDI Solo Diver class is 100 logged dives. Either he was lying, or his shop not only turns out very poor divers, but they also have no respect for even what standards there are.
 
I was diving oil slick "Bonaire" with Herman on this board.

There was a couple at the ladder (we were all ending our dives) that was fooling around and wouldn't get out of the water.

Problem was - her tank had slipped out of her BC on the way up the ladder - it had jerked her back into the ocean and things were not going well.

Herman (who is a DM) saw it as a serious problem - I saw it as a bunch of idiots - he was right and we were able to help them prevent a potential disaster .

I took the next available stress/rescue class.
 
Having a tank come loose isn't necessarily the sign of an idiot ... it's one of the things I dislike about a lot of recreational dive rigs, and the reason I much prefer diving a rig with two tank straps.

I agree that it can lead to more serious problems ... especially at a place like Oil Slick Leap, where getting out of the water means timing the waves and climbing a ladder ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)
 
What I saw as alot of horse play was really a panic situation that I did not recognize.

The tank coming out when she was going up the ladder caused her to fall back on her dive buddy which created all kinds of issues.
 
Does a self rescue count? As I was in rescue class we were practicing an unconscious diver rescue. The diver was at one end of the pool and I was at the other end. I was then told to get in and get the diver. I don't remember if it was timed or not, but I felt the need to do this quickly. So as I pass the half way point of the pool I went to take a breath (that I really needed at that point due to my exhale) when I realized I didn't have the one very important piece of equipment in my mouth. When I went to get the reg I couldn't get it uncliped from my d-ring, it didn't take me long to find my octo!! I went through the whole thing without anyone knowing. I finally told them a couple weeks latter. I shouldn't have to them, my ribs have hurt ever since.

Thinking back I never told myself thanks either . Male pride again I guess.
 
Well...a couple. I actually had a student breathe a steel 72 dry in a pool training session (basic open water class). I am still wondering how he actually managed that. I always pulled the student tanks out of the shop racks and checked pressure on each one before class, topped off any that were even remotely low, and then before I let them in the pool they had to tell me how much air was in their tank before we went into the water. We were about a half hour into the pool session and to that point in my teaching I usually looked at my gauges, then pointed to each student in turn for them to check with the rule being if they had more than 1000 psi they were to give me an okay sign back on the air check which I did at 15 minute intervals. How this guy managed to go dry so quickly was and still is a mystery to me. He didn't appear stressed and wasn't breathing in a way to cause me alarm, but something happened. The deep end at this pool is 15 feet and I gave him my primary and went to my secondary. Needless to say from that point onward I started looking at student gauges at about 15 minute intervals.

The only "save" I really made came as a total surprise and really isn't another diver. In a previous life I was a police officer in the pacific northwest and was a member of the dive team. We got called out for a boat floating upside down about 200 yards offshore. Usually these things are someone trying to collect insurance money by scuttling their own property, especially since the weather had been calm for days. It was about a 25' cabin cruiser and my buddy and I went under the boat and swam up into the cabin to find a pair of legs dangling down, kicking. I don't know who was more surprised...him or us for actually finding someone in flipped vessel. I surfaced in the air pocket, which scared the living crap out of him by the way, and gave him the half minute version of how to breathe through a regulator, and then we took him out of the boat. The person told us that he had decided to sleep aboard and woke up with "everything upside down" (sounded fishy to me...but who knows, the Coast Guard had to deal with the whys after that).
 
Hey, don't dis butt-first descenders. They're doing better than I was when I was new. I descended on my BACK, until I hit the bottom, and then turned over and went diving.

Thank God for NWGratefulDiver . . .

Bob told me this story last weekend, and I wasn't completely sure he was telling the truth...I guess he was.

Tom
 
Thanking someone for coming to their aid involves admitting they either did something wrong, or did not have sufficient skills, but the other person did. I have a feeling that most divers care less about being in a dive accident and more about looking bad in front of other divers.

...and I do say this at least partly from personal experience. There's nothing worse than whispering in a low voice to your dive buddy "hey...do me a favor...turn my air on."

Tom
 
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