Point Lobos fatality - California

[Shasta_man]

I didn't respond to your PM as it's appropriate here.

You weren't a victim of misinterpretation or reading between the lines. I just went by what you wrote. Whether anyone else complained about your statement is irrelevant.

If you say "Shastaman was in a car crash today" and then "People shouldn't drunk drive and if I'm drunk driving, you should stop me" then it's clear your second statement was due to your thoughts on the car crash. Otherwise you wouldn't say those things together. That's no leap of interpretation to think that. If that wasn't your intent, then great, but it's how you wrote it, and why I suggested rephrase if you didn't mean that. Not the end of the world here, I just thought we don't have the facts to make such a diagnosis and would be unfair to suggest that.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

raftingtigger, I think you at least owe the victim a rephrasing of your last message. Your message says we have no idea what happened here but it must have been one of these reckless or clueless behaviors. You then follow it up with if I'm doing something stupid, stop me. That's a pretty clear inference that this person must have been stupid or clueless for this to happen. Yet, it's well known and even stated by you that this can be a dangerous and tough place to dive, and further, most importantly, that we know zero about what happened except they pulled this poor woman unconscious from the ocean. Your sentiment about being generally careful is a good thing but your automatic inference that this incident was based on some reckless behavior is based on no data and is a reckless leap on your part.

Separately, this is certainly a tragic situation. Even though the rescue squad was right there, they still couldn't save her. Shee, even when we're fiddling around in our lives, somewhere there is someone fighting for their life.

I guess I didn't take it as anything more than a well-meaning comment that may have been based on previous experience. I've only dived Monastery one day (two dives), and when I read the OP what popped into my head immediately was my own first entry there. Now, I'm accustomed to Puget Sound conditions, which require a certain routine that I found out rather quickly doesn't work well at Monastery. I entered the water with fins in hand, no reg in my mouth, and no air in my BCD ... just like I usually do here at home. The first step had water up to my knees ... the second step I found myself, literally, in over my head. Luckily it was a reasonably calm day, and I had my backup reg on a necklace, so it wasn't a big deal. I popped the backup into my mouth, inflated my wing, and calmly came to the surface to put my fins on. I doubt my dive buddy even noticed my faux pas. But it made me think about how differently that would be if my reg was in a standard configuration, where I'd have had to "fish" for either my primary or octopus ... how well that might work on a day when the sea wasn't calm and I was getting pounded by surf ... or, God help me, if I'd neglected to turn my air on. That could easily kill you before your dive buddy even knew there was a problem.

I'm not suggesting that's what happened in this case ... the story simply doesn't provide enough information to even speculate. But those are the thoughts and images that popped into my head the moment someone said "Monastery".

I don't think it's a bad thing to use stories like this one to remind people to be careful ... to follow a routine that fits the circumstances of the dive site you're entering ... or to invite people to not hesitate if you see someone else doing something that might endanger them to say something. That's how I took his post ... didn't really read any inference in there to suggest that the tragic death of this young woman was due to "careless, reckless, unobservant, or mentally, physically, or equipment unprepared" ... but rather that these are good things to watch out for. In the case of Monastery, I'd call that pretty good advice ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[TSandM]

I have one dive at Monastery. We went into flat calm water -- not even ankle slappers. Entry was easy, because I had been warned about the shore break. By the time we finished an hour dive, the water had changed. We now had small waves. On any other beach, they would have been unnoticeable and no concern at all. At Monastery, for me, they were a disaster. The only place to stand to take off my fins was right AT the shore break (I'm too short to do it a couple of feet further out, which my taller buddies were able to do). Those tiny waves were the visible manifestations of a LOT more water movement, and I got rolled. There was no way I could get to my feet on the steep break, and I got Monastery berries in my regulator, which caused a freeflow. Without wearing doubles (so I had TONS of reserve gas) and having a VERY tall and strong dive buddy (who was trying to save my neck while my husband was busily running for his CAMERA) it could have had a bad outcome.

I don't think you can warn people enough about that site. Although I agree that most people would infer that a post like raftingtigger's is accusatory, as someone who has dived there, I just read it as the heartfelt offering of someone who knows the site.

 

[Drin]

This is the sign you have to walk past to get to the actual beach berm at Monastery. It doesn't pull any punches, but people still die there far too often. It's sad. I was walking on the beach when the last victim was found and saw the emergency crews trying to revive her.

I always park by the daycare and make the walk to the small cove known locally as "Eagle's Beak". That avoids the beach entirely and gives much faster access to the canyon wall.

-Adrian

 

[dshorwich]

The only place to stand to take off my fins was right AT the shore break (I'm too short to do it a couple of feet further out, which my taller buddies were able to do). Those tiny waves were the visible manifestations of a LOT more water movement, and I got rolled. There was no way I could get to my feet on the steep break...

The best way to exit Monastery is to crawl out on your hands and knees, reg in mouth, until you're well clear of the highest surf, a maneuver known as the "Monastery Crawl". It's the opposite of elegant, and in the process you get sand jammed into the unlikeliest places in your gear, but IMO that's far preferable to getting tossed in the surf. I'll crawl out even on the calmest of days, on the principle that it's better to use safest practices even when not absolutely necessary. And you never know when a rogue wave might come in and slam you while you're standing there trying to get your fins off on a short steep beach.

This is the sign you have to walk past to get to the actual beach berm at Monastery. It doesn't pull any punches, but people still die there far too often.

I've seen people stop and read that sign attentively, and I've seen people walk right by it without giving it a second glance.

I remember one time a few years ago a buddy and I were gearing up at the top of the berm on the north side of the beach when 3 people (2 women and a young teenage boy) came walking along near the bottom of the berm; the boy was right at the surf line, occasionally getting his feet wet. It was a pretty calm day, but still...I looked at my buddy and said, "we ought to say something." So I approached the group and said, as politely as possible, "excuse me, are you from around here?" They weren't, which is what I expected. "Well, then," I continued, "I just wanted to let you know that this can be a very hazardous beach, big waves can come in without warning, and I would recommend you not walk so close to the water."

They looked at me with a blank expression that suggested I was an annoying busybody who didn't know what he was talking about (the first half of that may be true, granted), and continued on their way without changing course. At that point I just shrugged my shoulders and went back to rejoin my buddy; there's only so much you can do to protect people from themselves.

 

[Shasta_man]

I agree completely that such reminders are a good thing, and appropriate in these discussion forums, and acknowledged that in my response.

I suggest this was just the victim of written communication where we can't see a person or hear pauses. As the list of problems the poster used were all careless or reckless issues the diver could have controlled, I just would have written it differently to distinguish the tips as being separate from what we think happened.

I pause here to remember we are talking about the tragic death of a young woman.

---------- Post added April 17th, 2014 at 01:54 PM ----------

dshorwich: I've noted a surprisingly high number of people getting washed out to sea in the recent past. You wonder how that can happen but apparently it's not that difficult.

 

[MaxBottomtime]

I've been very lucky. Each time I've dived there it has looked like this;

 

[Ricky B]

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A ScubaBoard Staff Message...

The topic of the thread being the incident that occurred, posts extending the discussion of what one poster thinks another poster meant by a post were deleted as being off-topic

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