Recreational OW diving with long hoses (or the 'usual' r/h hose routing) ...

[Tortuga68]

Oh, so I am not allowed to add my support or offer a post?! Sorry, but I felt more clarification was necessary

Keep your shirt on... I was agreeing with you and citing your answer as one good example of how the OPs concerns have been addressed

 

[Diver0001]

1. (Biggest one of all IMO) The donated reg is always where it's meant to be and never dangling unsecured 'somewhere'.

When the DIR/Hog thing first entered the recreational realm I resisted using it for a while because I didn't want to be associated with the trench warfare going on on the internet. This point, however, is the very thing that finally became the argument that tipped the scales for me (that and meeting Bill Hogarth on the internet, who turned out to be a lot nicer than the pro/anti DIR rhetoric that was rampant at the time). I've been using the Hog config for over 10 years now with both singles and twins and none of the arguments against it make any sense to me anymore.

As an instructor I have also learned that control and predictability are key elements to dealing with emergencies and having the octopus EXACTLY where you thought it was can save lives. During the one real-world rescue I was involved in, it turned out that one of the main issues that caused the accident to escalate to the point where a diver drowned (in the end, he actually survived) was that the diver who had gone OOA couldn't find his buddy's octopus and neither could his buddy.

Negatives of long hose (hog or otherwise):

1. If the OOD starts to ascend too quickly and he's out of reach, regaining control could get pretty messy.

The amount of muppetry required to get to that point is pretty high, tbh. I know that everyone has a breaking point but if you apply the ABC technique for managing emergencies then you can really cut down on the potential for this.

I can't really get away from that point. If he's actually run out of air it probably means he's not an attentive diver. If that's his nature then there's a fair chance he'll also have poor control over his ascent rate, especially if it's vertical with no reference. Can't see myself ever wanting to let an OOA diver get beyond an arms reach once he's breathing off my reg.

You, of all people, should know that that AAS protocol involves establishing and maintaining contact with the distressed diver (ie. holding on to them in order to avoid this very scenario). That's no different with a long hose. ABC doesn't stop working just because you have more room to move. You let go of the distressed diver with a long hose when you have reached C. Before that, you grab them just like you normally would.

R..

 

[roydude]

c. IF the person does bolt and gets away from you, how is that different from bolting and getting away from you with a 36" "standard" Octo hose?

They can't get more than an arms reach with the reg in their mouth (which is the foundation of my concern with a longer hose).

The amount of muppetry required to get to that point is pretty high, tbh.

Lol - true, true. (... and 'muppetry' is now part of my vocab.

You, of all people, should know that that AAS protocol involves establishing and maintaining contact with the distressed diver ...

Thanks for the tip . So AAS procedures with a long hose requires you never lose contact with an OOD you're donating to? Then the extra length's only used for parallel swimming, not ascending with an OOD? Parallel swimming just to continue exploring a dive with an OOA diver is arguably an unsafe practice (in an OW situation) and you can comfortably parallel dive to a safe ascent location with a standard hose if it's routed properly as previously discussed.

My final safety 'issue' I have here is feeling pretty weak now though in light of the very valid point made by Boulderjohn about the 'missplaced octopus' situations. I have to concede that in practice the safety offered by always knowing where your donated air source is located far outweighs any potential issue arising from letting the OOD diver get beyond your reach IMO.

 

[Diver0001]

So AAS procedures with a long hose requires you never lose contact with an OOD you're donating to?

Not until you get to "C"

A. = air. establish and maintain contact, get the OOA diver a regulator
B. = buoyancy. Establish a neutral "diving" buoyancy between both divers so that we are "diving" again and neither ascending nor descending unintentionally. We are working as a unit and establishing the same neutral depth.
C. = communicate. Once the air and buoyancy are reestablished one would expect any feelings of panic to subside quickly. At that point, make a plan, communicate to one another and execute the plan. At this point you can let the diver go because he is not in an emergency, he has air (A) is diving normally (B) and he knows what you're doing (C).

ABC. It's the Diver0001 method of dealing with emergencies. I teach it in OW and it can be applied to just about all cases of equipment malfunction or "muppetry". It works with short hoses and with long hoses because it's about the divers and not about the gear.

My final safety 'issue' I have here is feeling pretty weak now though in light of the very valid point made by Boulderjohn about the 'missplaced octopus' situations. I have to concede that in practice the safety offered by always knowing where your donated air source is located far outweighs any potential issue arising from letting the OOD diver get beyond your reach IMO.

We're totally on the same wave-length with that.

R..

---------- Post Merged at 01:51 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 01:18 PM ----------

I know there's an argument that a long hose gives people room to move etc..., but I route my occy from the left, over the top of my shoulder flush with my chest down the side of my LP hose with the 2nd stage attached to my bcd waistbelt (photo's to follow).

I'd like to revisit this bit that you posted in your opening post. Could you please post the picture you promised? I'm open to changing how I teach the routing of the octopus if you've discovered something that works better than the under the arm thing.

Let's see it please.

R..

 

[roydude]

Sure thing - I'll stick pictures up tomorrow.

 

[rhwestfall]

I understand and acknowledge what you are saying...

but...

should a properly trained diver not also be versed in buddy breathing?

I'm not even positive its in the curriculum any more. In the recent exposure I have had regarding instruction, it only appeared in a MSD class, and quite frankly, since I was the dinosaur in the room (cert. 24 years ago), most there were receiving their first exposure to not only that skill, but BC breathing too....

 

[boulderjohn]

I understand and acknowledge what you are saying...

but...

should a properly trained diver not also be versed in buddy breathing?

No, I don't think so.

Some agencies do not even allow it to be taught at the OW level, because experience has shown that even well-trained divers in buddy breathing can often screw it up when it happens in real life, resulting in two casualties rather than one. Even in my technical training, when I had to do a training dive that was so screwed up (as part of the instructional plan) that my buddy and I reached the point that we had to buddy breathe, the key point of the exercise was that buddy breathing is an absolute last resort, and it would seem to me that it would be better to prevent that from happening by wise choices ahead of time than to count on it working instead.

What I love about these discussion is that we start off with a premise that divers who are taking a working alternate air source in an OOA emergency are in such a panic that they will not calm down and will continue to act in a panicked frenzy even after attaining a working regulator. On the other hand, if they find out that there is no working regulator to be had and must instead rely on buddy breathing, they will immediately calm down and follow the buddy breathing procedure perfectly. People argue that a diver who has taken a working regulator from a buddy will bolt to the surface, putting the buddy in peril, but that same diver in a buddy breathing situation will calmly take two breaths, hand the regulator back to the buddy, and then wait patiently with no regulator while the buddy takes two breaths.

I question that.

 

[roydude]

On a slightly off topic note - if the long hose + reg is the one donated with hog, why's it always black and never a distinguishable color like yellow (as donated regs are in the non-hog config)?

 

[boulderjohn]

On a slightly off topic note - if the long hose + reg is the one donated with hog, why's it always black and never a distinguishable color like yellow (as donated regs are in the non-hog config)?

The yellow color makes the regulator easy for the OOA diver to spot in an emergency. The regulator in the diver's mouth is pretty easy to locate.

And one more point on buddy breathing....

If know how to buddy breathe. I am sure I can do it with the right partner if I have to. However, if I am on a recreational, open water dive, somehow find myself OOA (which is inconceivable in itself), and find taht my buddy has no working alternate, I will CESA every time, unless I am with a buddy I have absolute faith in, and even then I might CESA first. As for being the donor, I never, ever want to be in a situation where I have to hand my only working regulator to a potentially panicked diver.

 

[danvolker]

View attachment 138701

On a slightly off topic note - if the long hose + reg is the one donated with hog, why's it always black and never a distinguishable color like yellow (as donated regs are in the non-hog config)?

View attachment 138701

What possible reason would there be for color....