Overconfident OW divers

[lundysd]

I wanted to point something that I (in my limited experience) have noticed and want to address. I was talking to a friend yesterday about my OW certification (recent) program and a trip to Cozumel that I'm taking. A young lady overheard me and began to talk about her experience from the same class. This class is a full semester at the college I go to and is more in depth than most OW checkouts, but this person seemed to think it made them an experienced diver. She began talking about her trip and about she "had a broken pressuge gauge on a dive from the beginning, but was so comfortable and experienced that she just looked off her dive buddies and continued the dive by guessing." Now I understand not panicking is important in this situation, but this blew me away; knowingly continuing a dive with a bad SPG?

I was really angry for a while, but then I realized that I too have a little of the same self-confidence even though I am just beginning my diving. A part of this can be attributed to my zealousness for the sport and my desire to learn more, but just because we as new divers read scubaboard and have a few dives does not mean we shouldn't be aware of our lack of experience. I have begun to realize how little I know and how I need to be even more careful because of my enthusiasm.

This got a little longwinded, but the point is to never get complacent or think that "it will never happen to you."

Scott

 

[xSandman3]

You were right to be annoyed. Everyone has different rates of air consumption, and a bad SPG is an immediate dive-ender. She put not only herself at risk, but also her buddy if she had run out of air.

 

[rje634]

Sounds like this girl is going to end up as a statistic!!!!!
Any instructor or DM would have ended the dive immediately..
Who was she diving with, and did they know her SPG was dead?

 

[Spratman]

Yep, I would have been hacked too. I'm a newbie diver and have seen some just plain foolish things from experienced divers, so another noob is just flat dangerous. She is lucky it turned out okay. I hope she learned from it....remember not to nab her for a dive buddy...

Jack

 

[herman]

This may be even worst than it sounds at first reading..does "broken since the beginning" mean that it was rental gear and she did not bother to check it out at the shop?? Rental gear is a big unknown and I would bet she just picked it up and headed to the boat without checking a thing. Talk about a "trust me" dive. I don't even trust my own gear to be "fine when we get there". It's always checked at the dock. Scott, it's reasons like this that you see so many experienced....make that competent, divers not wanting to dive with new divers. Now that I think about it for a minute, what the dickens was her buddy thinking? I know pretty closely what the air pressure of everyone who is directly diving with me is and bug the crap out of new buddies until I have a good feel for what their air consumption is. I expect them to do the sameto me. No way I would of let a buddy continue the dive in this situation....come to think of it, why did her buddy even let her in the water like that. Looks like a very "experienced" buddy team to me.

 

[lundysd]

She was actually proud of this "accomplishment"; believe it or not, her dive buddy was her father, which makes the whole situation even worse. In retrospect I should have said something, but I was too blow away/peeved to open my mouth after that.

Herman: It's unfortunate that things like this deter competent divers from helping inexperienced divers like myself. I totally understand why, but it certainly doesn't rectify the problem of divers who don't know better

 

[scubagirl15]

Like they say, ignorance is bliss. You don't know what you don't know, right?

 

[Jim Ernst]

WOW, that blows me away, i would not do it, and would not let my dive buddy do it either, no spg spells TROUBLE !!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Wristshot]

Wow. I continued a dive once when the computer failed. I watched my buddy's (two actually) computers to make sure that I did not exceed the NDL, and I made sure that I was never lower than they were. However, I did have a working pressure gauge so I knew (in theory) how much air I had at any given moment.

While some might think I was foolish (and they are entitled to their opinions) it really is hard to understand how someone who supposedly understands what was going on would think that it would be prudent to dive without a pressure gauge.

Some people might try to justify by saying that they always use less air than so-and-so or something like that. Maybe they were not very deep, or they were confident in the availability of a buddy for buddy-breathing. Whatever. I would definitely chew out a buddy that continued a dive without a gauge, but that's just me.


Wristshot

 

[MoonWrasse]

Ok, Texas. Need I say more


Anyway, in her defense, what exactly does a "broken SPG" mean? If the pressure portion wasn't working, I'd say that was really stupid, and dangerous to the buddy as well ("where's my alternate air source"). If the depth guage was not working, was she wearing a dive computer on her wrist providing depth information?

If it was a shallow dive, maybe she felt comfortable like a cowboy, who knows.

Personally, I would've opted out of the dive unless I could secure a replacement SPG.