Panic During Training

[MiG29]

Hello everybody,

Harsh criticism is no problem, but please don't hammer me because of my language skills. English is not my mother tongue. Also, sorry but it's going to be long.

I'm new to the site and new to diving and the latter will probably stay like this because my experience doesn't give me too much encouragement. I will not name the parties involved.

I did the PADI OWD course last year, the classroom sessions, the pool thing and then was preparing for the real thing on the Red Sea. I had read the course book and watched the instructional video etc before the course so I was really an enthusiastic student. I really wanted to start diving. I was so excited I couldn't sleep the night before our flight to Egypt. Wow, I'm going to go underwater, great!

On the sea we stayed on a liveaboard. My instructor did the first underwater class in the sea, then passed this task to another instructor whom I only met onboard. And that's where my problems started. We just didn't get along diving-wise. Maybe he thought I wasn't born for diving (which is true), or that I was hopeless (which is probably not true), or simply he just didn't like me. Anyway, our first session was was OOA practice. After the short briefing we went to approx 5 meters and I took my reg out of my mouth and gave him the 'let me get air from you' stuff. He stopped swimming and lifted his arms to help me get his octo. Which I grabbed and pulled and bang, nothing happened, it wouldn't move. I pulled it once more and bang, nothing happened, it stayed attached to his body. I pulled it the third time and nothing happened. Until this I was continuously saying 'zzzzz' as I had learned in the pool. Nice and calm. But when for the third time I couldn't get that octo, I unintentionally grasped for air and because I was too much of a rookie it never came to my mind to put my reg back into my mouth. The result was a big gulp of seawater which completely caused the feeling of drowning. That's when he acted and started grabbing for my octo. But I was already in survival mode and also trying to get hold of it, because my reg was floating somewhere. Actually, I never saw it in this phase and as I was really a useless, inexperienced idiot, we ended up fighting for the same thing. I don't know why he didn't get my reg, probably he didn't see it either. Or I was fighting hard Meanwhile I swallowed the second portion of seawater and now I was absolutely convinced I was going to drown during my second training session in 5 metre-deep water, in the beautiful and warm Red Sea. Finally he put my octo into my mouth. It felt like minutes until my breathing went back to normal. Then I switched back to my reg. Then he signalled me to repeat the excercise. I said OK. No way I'm going to be the looser here.

Guess what, it became an exact reproduction of my original ordeal. His frigging octo wouldn't get unclipped and I started swallowing seawater again. After the second gulp of the second try, (altogether this was the fourth) I decided I had enough. Without any further communication I slowly ascended to the surface. On the boat I asked him how come I couldn't unclip the octo and he said something like it was my mistake. Later I saw the same excercise underwater with another instructor and what struck me as odd was that his students first signalled the OOA signal, THEN grabbed the octo and when they had the octo securely in their hands, FINALLY removed their own reg. It appeared to me I screwed up the sequence and because of my panic I couldn't properly pull the octo, but he never said anything about the sequence. Or the clip of his octo wasn't working properly.

Next time with him as the leader we went to a late afternoon dive during which the sun went down and it became completely and very quickly dark. I didn't see a thing. It felt very unsafe since we didn't have lights with us, I didn't have any idea about directions, air in the tank etc, and it was altogether my third time in the sea. I got lost, the group disappeared somewhere and although there were boats in the very near vicinity (max 50 metres), and the sea was very calm, it felt very lonely and very very unsafe.

After these I couldn't trust him any more so I quit his trainings. It was such a bad experience and it hasn't gone away. That's why I wrote I might not ever be a recreational diver. It appears I need more time and a more emphatic approach than that.

So what do you think? How should I have done the OOA practice properly? Is it really lonely if you don't have a torch in an evening-turned late afternoon dive, and when you loust the group or I just freaked out? I welcome all comments.

Thank you

 

[300bar]

What do I think.

Well you didn't do anything wrong,the instructor did.
He should have briefed you and HE should have shown you durring the buddycheck,how to unclip his alt.airsourse.HE should have responded when HE saw you couldn't unclip his alt.airsource.

So don't blame yourself,blame the instructor.
Do yourself a favor,just go finish the course with you initial instructor back home.

Have fun and safe diving.

 

[sprange]

Wow...if that was my first experience in scuba I'm not sure I'd be diving today. Generally when I am diving with somebody who has their backup regulator (octo) clipped or otherwise stuffed somewhere I always ask for a demonstration of its deployment before I dive. I follow up with the warning that I'll likely be going for the regulator that's in their mouth, but that's a whole new topic. Anyway if you enjoyed the experience of being underwater, find a 'good' instructor (ask around). I'm sorry that your 'training' ended up this way.

 

[bleeb]

I commend you for being willing to come here and post in a public forum for more information. Since you started out enthusiastic, hopefully our explanations that what you experienced shouldn't have happened and possible ways of restarting your dive education will help you decide to keep learning to dive.

If I understood you correctly, the dive where it got very dark on you was your third Open Water dive (i.e. not in a pool or other form of confined water), and as far as I know and as you seem to be implying, this was still a training dive and you did not have your Open Water certification at the time. I'm not an instructor, but as I understand it, doing a basic OW training dive at night is a major error by the instructor (i.e. "standards violation") for most agencies, including PADI. This is exactly for the reasons you discovered: too easy to loose people, when the student may not be completely comfortable yet, or has too many things to think about since some of the physical activities involved in diving haven't become automatic yet. In your case, it was nightfall or dim, which may not have actually broken the rules for training but were at least coming close, based on what seems to actually have happened (i.e. you lost everyone, and you felt especially uncomfortable). Whether or not it broke the rules, it doesn't sound like it was good training practice for someone still learning.

If you look around here on ScubaBoard for long enough, you'll see that poor instruction is a frequent concern and that beginners are advised to find an instructor that's both competent and that they feel comfortable with. (Talk to them before signing up, talk to people who have trained with them, etc. to get a feel for whether their style of teaching matches your style of learning.) A lot of the better course may end up costing more, but to some extent, you're hopefully getting more value for your money with more instruction. Another alternative is learning with a club (seems more common in Europe), they typically take things more slowly, giving you more practice time with each newly learned skill before starting on the next one.

Although doing the certification dives in warm water during a vacation is popular, there are also some advantages to doing things at home, where you can take things more slowly and have more time to pick the instructor. This also has the advantage that you'll learn to dive in locations near where you live, which gives you more opportunity to dive that just when you're on vacation, and since diving is a physical skill, doing it more frequently helps keep your skills up. It's also nice not to spend part of your valuable vacation and travel time "in school".

 

[TSandM]

I can't imagine why, if the instructor saw you tugging at his octo repeatedly and unable to get it free, he didn't free it himself, or donate a reg, or put yours back in your mouth. One of the things the instructor is there to do is to keep you safe, and he's got to figure you have a limited amount of time to be comfortable without inhaling.

It does worry me a little that you breathed salt water TWICE, though. Once is a mistake we could all make. The second time, I would have thought you would have been prepared for difficulty removing the octo, and would have stayed aware of the location of your primary regulator so that you could reclaim it if you ran into the same trouble. Still, first dives in open water are a lot of overload. I'm surprised, actually, that you were doing an airshare on your first dive. What agency is this? For PADI, the first OW dive is just a skill-free tour, to get oriented and relaxed.

It doesn't sound as though you completed your course, which makes it seem odd that you were in the water at dusk or dark -- or was it just late afternoon, with shadows? I would not want to be in the water in the dark without a light; in fact, for a long time, I didn't much like being in the water in the dark anyway. Dealing with the lack of visual information that you have when night diving can take a while to learn.

At any rate, if the little you saw makes you think that diving is still something you would like to learn, I'd recommend you go back to the shop at home where you did your classroom and pool work, and talk to them about doing the OW dives there. Explain what happened in the Red Sea, and request that you have a patient instructor, and be prepared perhaps to pay for some extra dives until you are comfortable.

And you learned a good lesson . . . make sure whatever system your buddy is using for donating gas, that you understand it and that both of you have checked that it works before you get in the water.

 

[fisheater]

First off, your English is excellent!!! There's no need for you to be concerned about that.

As for your diving, I think you have what it takes to become an awesome diver. If you stuck with the drill, even though your instructor's gear was faulty (if an OOA diver can't free the octo with strong tugs, it's NOT the diver's fault) and inhaled seawater TWICE, you're not the type to panic when the going gets rough. You didn't screw up anything. In a real OOA situation, that reg in your mouth won't do you much good at that depth or it may be faulty. In either case, you're going to get rid of it and grab a working reg. Hint: If your buddy's octo won't deploy, grab their primary right from their mouths. Get a couple of breaths and then both of you can work on getting the octo deployed.

Also, many of us dive with systems that assume that the OOA diver will get the donor's primary reg (the one everyone knows is working) and the donor will go to his/her own octo.

All in all, you're doing great and should carry on with diving.

 

[stefo2]

TsandM, the way I understood the OP, the first check-out dive was done with a different instructor, whom he felt comfortable with. It was the second (and probably the third) with a different instructor, who was also on the boat, that these things happened.

Still, even on the second OWD this seems like a rather strange way to do skills. The only one I can think of in which you take out your regulator first, is the regulator retrieval - take it out, retrieve it, put it back in, clear it, breathe. For the airshare skill, I only know the sequence of signalling OOA and "want to share air", get the instructor's octo (or actually have it offered to you), take out your own, put in the octo etc...

In any case, I absolutely agree, this skill and the sequence should have been discussed before the dive and when the intrsuctor noticed that the student couldn't get his octo, he should have quickly helped him.

I'm a little surprised at the "night" dive, though. It does get dark rather quickly in Egypt, but if the dive really started in the late afternoon (before sunset), it would still take about an hour at least before it's really dark. MiG29 - can you remember what time you actually got into the water for that dive?

If that dive was actually planned as a dusk/night dive, then this is definetely a serious breach of standards - uncertified divers and no torches on a night dive?

 

[openmindOW]

Mig29, your English is excellent.

Thank you very much for posting on ScubaBoard about your experience.

You have nothing to be embarrassed about. I am sorry to hear about the unpleasant experience you had. Your Instructor failed.

You had a bad Intructor.

Frankly, if he was teaching/evaluating the skill as you describe, he was out of standards. He also failed to react appropriately to a student in distress. And, it should never matter whether the Intructor likes you or not. His job is to try to make his students feel comfortable.

Please get back into diving, Mig29. It's a fun activity.

 

[MiG29]

Thank you for your comments and encouragement, everyone. I'll try and make clear a few points you're referring to. (I don't know how to respond to each comment, hence the combined stuff. Sorry to miss some of the comments. And again it's going to be long.)

bleeb, this happened in Egypt after the neccessary pool session in Hungary. This was a training dive indeed to build up the skills for the certificate. The first such training dive was with my original instructor and we did the same routine. Mask removal and putting it back, OOA etc. With the new instructor this was my first training dive, all in all the second dive in the sea. The third one was not strictly speaking a night dive, but boy, it became very dark in minutes, under and above the water. As it happens by nature in that region. We went into the water sometime before 7, in the setting sun with a lot of light, and I ascended at about 7.30 in complete darkness, like in a normal evening. I would gladly dive here in HUngary, but we have basically nothing. A few quarries perhaps with marginal visibility.

TSandM, I didn't understand his reactions, or non-reactions either. I tended to think all was intentional to teach me to survive. As for swallowing seawater more than one time, I thought I had made a mistake and that I could get the octo easily the second time. Big mistake on my part. You' re right, I should have prepared for this. And yes, we did air share in the first training, too, with the original instructor. I was 70% comfortable with it the first time. It generated a short shot of improper, quick and shallow breathing, but I managed to slow down. I thought it came with the job. Yes, it's a certified PADI team.

fisheater, thanks I never thought of getting his primary. I thought it would be a beginner's big mistake. If there will be a next time with the same situation, I'll get the damned primary! Oh yes, I did panic. After these experiences even snorkelling in ridiculously shallow water freaked me out. It took me a lot of self-push to get back into the sea.

stefo2, it's a he, I'm a male It was an air share piece, we had already done the reg retrieval. It went very well. The mask removal went well, too, nice and easy. We had had a briefing beforehand, albeit a short one. But I remembered the instructional video plus the pool training, so I thought it would go smoothly. The evening stuff was not technically a night dive, although it reminded me of one. Our first group with the experienced guys actually was doing a night dive the same time, with torches and so on. We, very beginners went into the water after them, though. Funny, now that some of you mentioned it, they did have torches and a special briefing for a night dive. We did have nothing. I didn't have a computer or compass either, as I was just a rookie and I didn't know how to use one. As I wrote above, we began this dive before sunset and finished it in full darkness. The sun and the light disappeared in minutes. When I got fully disorientated and lost my group, I simply came to the surface and swam to our boat which was fully lit by then. All the other boats in the area were also flooded with electric light. Other than that, all was black. I have no idea how deep I was, but it couldn't have been deep. Or that's how it looked.

Perhaps it didn't help me either that it was a wreck safari, visiting famous wrecks. During these 8 days we were constantly seeing reminders of tragedies and the power of the sea. You know the deal, two or three wrecks a day. So in between trainings I got to see these wrecks, but it just didn't feel right to me to have these big dead ships in front of me, lying underwater. All the others onboard loved it, but I didn't. The Salem Express was an especially eriee sight. I did go down to see it, but I never let go the tag line. A couple times I had CO2 build-ups which I had never been briefed of before, another negative experience. I only realised one year after this trip what I must have experienced and why. (I was swimming very inefficiently and breathing improperly.)

My only good dive was the last one when we saw a very nice coral garden. I specifically asked for a dive master with whom we got along well and who understood my problems. He helped me to have at least one memorable dive. It was very nice, in wonderful lights, without wrecks. Needless to say, I had no idea how long we were diving and where, because the rest of the group disappeared in the strong currents. I didn't have any idea about my air either, but he was constantly checking my tank, as he told me afterwards. I never saw him checking my gauge, so I was quite suprised when he pushed his computer in front of me and showed the depth and duration of our dive, and signalled that we go up. I was pretty proud we were at 20 metres and that the we were diving for 50 minutes. Up on the surface I felt euphoria, it had been so beautiful. Then we realised we didn't see the boat. We drifted away because of the currents. We saw one of our Zodiacs for a short time but it was speeding away. After approx 20-25 minutes another liveaboard came by and they saw us wave like crazy. By that time it got pretty stressful in the sea, quite lonely, I must say. But we were doing ok. When they took us to our boat, our guys were a bit suprised, since they never realised when weren't there. Weird. So it was a tough first time

 

[stefo2]

Oh dear, that sounds like a bit of a trip from hell. And sorry about the sex-change, has been corrected

If you went in just before sunset (and after the night divers!) this was a night dive and they shouldn't have taken uncertified divers in the first place, let alone without torches. What were they thinking? That's you'd all run out of air within ten minutes?

About that last dive - there were also some serous mistakes made. I'm not going to go into you not checking your air - even if you trust the DM, you should always keep track of your air! - but focus on the surface problems. Didn't you or the DM have any surface signaling device? Safety sausage? Acoustic devices? Even a mirror to flash with? Doing a boat dive far away from shore (not to mention in an area with strong currents) without any of these is not a good idea at all. Even in relatively calm waters with only the slightest swell, it is very very difficult to spot a little diver bobbing on the surface. And since you had been down for 50 minutes the boat crew should have actually been expecting you to surface somwhere and been looking out for you. The fact that they hadn't even noticed you missing some half hour later leaves me speechless.

What were the procedures on board before and after a dive? Didn't they sign divers out and in?

It all sounds like a very unprofessionally run trip, but the fact that you still enjoyed some of it and (I guess) did get certified despite all the mess-ups, to me actually seems to indicate that you should continue diving.

Maybe an 8-day live-aboard trip wasn't the best option to choose for your certification dives.