Spotting for a valve drill

[riguerin]

I think you must have a confidence in your teams ability to help

... like pointing out and helping you fix the new bubble stream that appears off your 1st stage connection following your valve drill ?

 

[Ben_ca]

I've been on the other side of this:

I was watching a buddy who do S and Valve drills at 20 and 10 and while the valve drill was in progress she made eye contact while still signalling (part of the drill) I ended up with my long hose deployed sitting there in front of her... She just waved me off... Sometimes I get a little anxious and end up jumping the gun

 

[ScubaMilo]

I've been on the other side of this:

I was watching a buddy who do S and Valve drills at 20 and 10 and while the valve drill was in progress she made eye contact while still signalling (part of the drill) I ended up with my long hose deployed sitting there in front of her... She just waved me off... Sometimes I get a little anxious and end up jumping the gun

Agreed, when I'm watching a valve drill as soon as something happens that is not in perfect sequence my hand usually goes to my long hose and I (wait for the signal) and prepare to donate.
I have on occasion extended my reg and been waved off with a disgusted look.

Milo

 

[piikki]

I’d rather have a buddy who has the reg on offer when I continue to try to solve the problem. It does not mean it is a vote of no confidence. It’s nice it’s there in case I can’t secure it myself. Even if I don’t take it (yet), I can acknowledge it being offered with quick glance.

With regular buddy you kind of look on, and start the clock ticking from when you last saw them draw a breath or blow bubbles. At some point you just know that it’s been rather long for comfort.

 

[rjack321]

There were a number of mistakes made and already IDed. I have made them in the past and I'm hyper vigilent to them but they still creep in sometimes. (I wasn't there for this dive).

The big one I see is not having eye contact throughout the drill - a key element of team communication was missing.

I used to take Meng's opinion that you can twiddle away until you call OOA. But Chris LM pointed out to me in Cave1 that you're not on the team then, you're watching from the sidelines. Ready to sub in, but not really in the game. He advised to get engaged with your team as soon as a teammate starts screwing up a drill. You should be right in there before they even get the long hose turned off since she skipped the purge step. Don't let your teammates foster bad muscle memory and don't let them get to the point where they need to call OOA.

I am trying to get sharp enough to catch stuff like this before it gets past the first boo boo. I'm not there yet with the awareness myself.

 

[piikki]

What is the sign for 'drill over'/interrupt again?

 

[rhlee]

What is the sign for 'drill over'/interrupt again?

I use a cutting motion (think scissors) with my index and third fingers.

So, I'm not sure what exactly I would do in this situation, but I'm pretty sure that when I do a valve drill, I go to the backup reg before I clip off the longhose. Not sure if it matters much, but it was just what I was taught.

 

[rsdancey]

I was doing a valve drill, with my buddy watching. The drill started with a mistake -- I didn't purge my backup reg before I shut off the supply to the primary.

I think the first mistake we made was that we did not get into proper body orientation before starting the drill.

We were in a very slight current; just enough to move us in the water column. When the drill was about to begin, we were orientated at about a 120 degree angle; that is, not directly face to face, but forming a wide "V" shape.

Within seconds of the start of the drill, we have drifted even closer together, so that we were at an angle closer to 90 degrees (I have a lot more body surface than Lynne, I was drifting faster than she in the cross-current).

I have noticed both with myself and with other buddies who are struggling to learn how to do the drill that everyone seems to end up scattered all over the ocean in the process of the drill. Inadvertent fin kicks, buoyancy control problems, etc. tend to cause the teams to lose 180 degree orientation quickly. No excuse, but an explanation of my lack of effort at keeping my view directly head on.

I was aware that we were getting further out of position, but I was trying to do 3 things at the same time:

1) Watch what she was doing with her hands to make sure the knobs were turning correctly and in the right order. (I've both myself, and with team members seen errors with the knobs that could have lead to OOA, so I'm particularly vigilant on that score. The right post shut down, followed by a failure to do a right post open is classic.)

2) Deal with the fact that we were slowly drifting into a pile of wreckage, and would possibly have to move in the water column to avoid it. My assumption was that Lynn was going to be task-loaded on the drill, and might not notice the debris, so I was planning on moving my body to block hers from brushing up into the wreck and was drifting "the right way" to do that, so I did not correct.

(This drill was in Cove2 at Alki, which has a lot of random bottom clutter. We were doing the drill in 20-30fsw for maximum buoyancy challenge. The vis is always poor, on this occasion it was about 10ft-20ft depending on depth. We started the drill "in the clear" and drifted towards the debris which we could not see when the drill started.)

3) Focus on my own buoyancy & trim, as I was trying to stay slightly above her where I could see her fingers, helicopter a bit to deal with the geometry of the current, etc.

So net-net, we were both pretty task loaded (for our level of experience).

I asked in the debrief if she'd shown me OOA, and she said no (whew -- I'd have pretty much felt like an absolute *** if I'd missed THAT!).

Lessons learned: Prior to initiating the drill, make sure to achieve correct body position with eye contact, and ability to see both hands & regs of the person doing the drill. Stay in that orientation, moving as necessary if the drill-do'er goes walkabout. I also probably should have killed the drill rather than put the wreckage on my mental hazard radar -- we could have just kicked 15 feet in virtually any direction and made it a non-issue.

The point about comfort with OOA was a good one too. We had planned to do OOA after the valve drill. In the future, we'll do that first, so that we're all happy with each other's ability to do that. OOA is clearly the thing you should do FIRST when diving with a new buddy.

Ryan

PS: Despite her reg issues, Lynne nailed the drill, looked great on trim, and was able to reach all the knobs with seeming ease. My subsequent chicken-wing flailing, bouncing off the bottom, and eventual failure to even touch the left post was in stark contrast. Sigh.

 

[rjack321]

Good synopsis Ryan. We've all been through similar lessons learned.

Just wait until you have to do valve and S-drills eye-to-eye in 6ft of water in MX! :11:

 

[Lightning Fish]

I had an interesting experience last night that I wanted to share.

I was doing a valve drill, with my buddy watching. The drill started with a mistake -- I didn't purge my backup reg before I shut off the supply to the primary. .

Why do you purge the backup before doing the drill? Is this to ensure it works and that it is located where you expect it to be?

I closed my right post, breathed the primary reg down, and took it out of my mouth and clipped it off. I reached for my secondary . . .

Why wouldn't you pop the backup (assuming you found it) in before clipping off the primary? The first time I did an OOG drill I was told that the backup goes in as soon as the primary comes out.

Cheers,
Bill.