Runaway Buddy!

[Cacia]

I agree that he should not have solo'd but I think going down for a proper safety stop was prudent myself.

 

[do it easy]

Good point once again lamont! "Let's have a beer. I would dive with you."

 

[all4scuba05]

So if you're a very conservative diver, decend for a safety stop even though they're up there looking for you?
And if you're like the majority of divers who feel that a dive like that one really doesn't require decompression, then stay at surface, SMB or not, and wait for them to pop up near you instead of disappearing under water and swimming to shore?

 

[Cacia]

yea, pretty much. I think there are profiles where you don't require a decompression but if you know that you ascended emergently very fast and bubbles could still be forming, and if everything was under control, yes, me, personally, I would drop to 15 for three.(which is NOT recommended) And I would have my marker, which I would inflate on my inflator and since I do it on almost every dive as part of my routine safety stop, it would most likely go pretty smoothly. My point was that I would place my stop higher priority than the other two being worried for three more minutes, thats all I was saying. My logic would go like this: Laws of probability are that THEY are okay. If I saw him bolt to the surface (laws of probability indicate HE is not okay, I might omit the stop and go to the surface in case he was having a heart attack, needed to have his airway protected, etc) Keep in mind this is all Monday morning quarterbacking and I am in no way criticizing any of these parties...they all handled it well. EXCEPT for diving without a marker which I never get, but more people do it than not. My main reason is I don't want a prop or a keel taking my head off as I sit at 15 ft below the surface. Keels are the worst, silent and deep.

 

[lamont]

Some thoughts on the deco from this dive:

Its only fast compartments like around 5 mins that are close to saturation (17 / 5 == 3.4 half times) and at saturation on air the compartments would be at 24 fsw o pressure depth of N2. So by popping directly to the surface you are oversaturated by less than an ATA and these faster compartments are the compartments that have the highest M-values and can stand the most oversaturation. If he paused for any time at all before breaking the surface he could have done a short deco stop and helped to reduce that oversaturation and bubbling. Now, when he gets back on the surface, he's honestly in pretty decent shape -- he may have a bit of a bubble shower in his venous return, but that's actually normal and will get filtered by the lungs and he'll just offgas and the fizz should die down fairly quickly. By dropping back down, however, he risks doing a bounce dive -- particularly if his skills are not too good -- and compressing a bubble and letting it past through to the arterial side.

Also, I think I missed the biggest problem that I have with his choice to in-water recompress as a solo diver, which is that if he isn't good enough with basic skills to do a reg swap, he shouldn't be in the water solo. That's much more of a risk than any DCS concerns from any dive he should be on...

 

[Diver Dennis]

Rick had said in the first post that he and the other diver had waited long enough for the panicked diver to do a safety stop and surface before they talked about further action. I'm not sure at what depth the diver had regained control of his reg but from what I get from Rick's first post, he was not at the surface. Personally, I would have done the stop as I always do. I don't think going back, or staying at 15' would pose any recompression problems.

 

[Cacia]

thanks, lamont. I did not know about the risk of converting venous to arterial bubbles.... You have a more in depth handle on the gas physics than I. The various compartments get pretty complicated. I know I am guilty of freediving when I should not be.

I keep wondering, (notice I am not asking!) if Rick *****slapped his friend at least. Or gave him a lecture...maybe not. I tend to get freaky mad when some one scares me.

no kidding, Lamont's post on this is a keeper. I am willing to bet that there was no "pause" before breaking the surface though. I was thinking in terms of preventing more microbubbles forming.

-- he may have a bit of a bubble shower in his venous return, but that's actually normal and will get filtered by the lungs and he'll just offgas and the fizz should die down fairly quickly. By dropping back down, however, he risks doing a bounce dive -- particularly if his skills are not too good -- and compressing a bubble and letting it past through to the arterial side.

that is going on my hard drive, lamont, thanks.

 

[Darnold9999]

The rule I work from is - one minute search then surface - always part of the pre dive brief.

If on the emergency ascent I thought I was well under a minute AND I thought there was a good chance of finding my buddy then I might go back down. Depends on a bunch of factors like how late in the dive it was and how deep. Don't think this was a bad decision.

If after the 1 minute no contact then surface doing the safety stop - perhaps cut it short with a slower ascent - again would depend on the dive. To my mind the safety stop is part of the ascent to regroup.

As everyone has said going back down and then a long slow ascent to the beach was not in the plan, but after a panic/emergency situation people often are not thinking clearly even though they think they are. It takes a bit for the adreneline to wash from your system and get you back to normal thought. You can get pretty focused in that state and once you create a plan stick to it without thinking it through. Sounds like your buddy became focused on the DCS issue and gave it more importance than the lost buddy plan. We might disagree, but in the moment it wasn't actually all that bad a plan, he was at least thinking about safety.

Glad it worked out!

I assume he is practicing reg recovery and switching as we speak

 

[piikki]

Hey Rick – you think your buddy expected you to grab him? To me it sounds like he nearly had hoped you would not have noticed his absence! Do you know if your buddy was going to admit he was “lost buddy” if he made it back to you a bit quicker? The timelines sure give no excuse, this stinks big time to me. I was once pretty close to smacking a stranger for pulling this stunt on me… and I don’t mean the part about struggling but not communicating and then vanishing until my body was practically contorted into the shape of number 9 because I was so sure I had to go dial… Glad to hear you all OK.

 

[lamont]

As everyone has said going back down and then a long slow ascent to the beach was not in the plan, but after a panic/emergency situation people often are not thinking clearly even though they think they are. It takes a bit for the adreneline to wash from your system and get you back to normal thought. You can get pretty focused in that state and once you create a plan stick to it without thinking it through. Sounds like your buddy became focused on the DCS issue and gave it more importance than the lost buddy plan. We might disagree, but in the moment it wasn't actually all that bad a plan, he was at least thinking about safety.

Actually I think it was a bad plan, and he was over-focusing on the wrong safety issue. He was so concerned about getting DCS because he popped from a 20 minute, 30-foot dive that he put himself at risk of solo diving back to the shore and possibly getting himself entangled. If he can't swap his regs, I guarantee you that he'd have problems trying to untangle himself. That's the wrong judgement call and he needs to get a little bit less anxious about possible DCS. What he was displaying sounds like he wasn't thinking about safety, but that he was paranoid and afraid about DCS when there was no reason to be.

Catherine, more info on bounce diving: http://www.wkpp.org/articles/Decompression/why_we_do_not_bounce_dive_after_diving.htm