Uncontrolled ascent - almost what to do?

[Airburnr01]

No is not. There has never been the time to check.

---------- Post added October 12th, 2015 at 01:24 PM ----------



No I was not light on previous dives, and all the other dives where to short to almost empty the bottle. And I KNOW I should do a weight check, but I cannot dive alone, and my buddies did not want to spend time on that and neither did my instructors.

U need new buddies.

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[danvolker]

I decided to go up head first because I was low on air and was on 10-12 meters so it was not catastrophic to go up but it could have been if I stayed down because I was running out of air. I was in a dry suit so to try to control my ascent feet up is not something I think I could do. I can swim down and get my feet down. It would be difference in a wet suit perhaps.




Where do you read that I use my BCD as an elevator?

---------- Post added October 12th, 2015 at 02:52 PM ----------


.

OK, Dry suit is a whole different ball game than a wetsuit....at least if you are already very positive and heading up fast.

My elevator concept is valid with a wetsuit....but for a drysuit, the issue would be forcing every ounce of gas out of your drysuit...and this could very well prevent you from being effective in swimming head downward, fins up...There is the solution of pulling the neck of the drysuit open to dump air fast....but really this problem sounds like it began with a dry suit diver that had not done a buoyancy check with this gear configuration, and then discovered mid dive WHY the buoyancy checks are so important.

Sorry for assuming you were in a wetsuit!


*** I have a TLS 350 Trilam Trysuit, custom fitted. I use it for dives from 150 to 300 feet deep, where a wetsuit really does not work.
For recreational dives in the tropics, I HATE DRY SUITS!!!
If you are in shallow and cold water that requires a dry suit, my condolences to you

 

[BRT]

Just to buck the "just add more lead" trend... How did you get down in the first place? If you were able to descend easily, then you have enough lead on. If you had to fight your way down, then that should have been your first clue that either you need to add lead, or you had air trapped someplace and need to learn how to dump it effectively."Adding lead" is the catch all solution it seems, and it leads to all sorts of problems down the road. It's the easiest solution for an incompetent instructor to take, rather than teaching the student how to dive properly. Proper weighting and buoyancy/trim skills are basic foundations and shouldn't be passed off so easily.On the other hand, maybe you REALLY did need some additional lead, and as others have pointed out, a proper buoyancy check is critical.

Stoo, are you not aware that the air in your tank has weight and that weight will get you down when you are too light to do a safety stop with a nearly empty tank? If you don't know that you probably are not ready to be a "Solo" diver

---------- Post added October 12th, 2015 at 01:47 PM ----------

OK, Dry suit is a whole different ball game than a wetsuit....at least if you are already very positive and heading up fast.

My elevator concept is valid with a wetsuit....but for a drysuit, the issue would be forcing every ounce of gas out of your drysuit...and this could very well prevent you from being effective in swimming head downward, fins up...There is the solution of pulling the neck of the drysuit open to dump air fast....but really this problem sounds like it began with a dry suit diver that had not done a buoyancy check with this gear configuration, and then discovered mid dive WHY the buoyancy checks are so important.

Sorry for assuming you were in a wetsuit!


*** I have a TLS 350 Trilam Trysuit, custom fitted. I use it for dives from 150 to 300 feet deep, where a wetsuit really does not work.
For recreational dives in the tropics, I HATE DRY SUITS!!!
If you are in shallow and cold water that requires a dry suit, my condolences to you

If my gloves and hood are thin enough that I can rapidly pull open my neck seal that means I am diving water that I don't need a dry suit in.

 

[boulderjohn]

Just to buck the "just add more lead" trend... How did you get down in the first place? If you were able to descend easily, then you have enough lead on. If you had to fight your way down, then that should have been your first clue that either you need to add lead, or you had air trapped someplace and need to learn how to dump it effectively.

"Adding lead" is the catch all solution it seems, and it leads to all sorts of problems down the road. It's the easiest solution for an incompetent instructor to take, rather than teaching the student how to dive properly. Proper weighting and buoyancy/trim skills are basic foundations and shouldn't be passed off so easily.

On the other hand, maybe you REALLY did need some additional lead, and as others have pointed out, a proper buoyancy check is critical.

I went down easily. I started to have problem when I have used more air than usually. I think I just need 1 kg more.. but I that I will figure out with someone else

Stoo, are you not aware that the air in your tank has weight and that weight will get you down when you are too light to do a safety stop with a nearly empty tank? If you don't know that you probably are not ready to be a "Solo" diver

I think I'll have to side with Stoo on this one.

As he said, you should have done a weight check, but if you went down easily, then the odds are pretty good that a proper weight check would have resulted in you having less weight, not more. A person who descends with ease is usually at least a little overweighted, A diver who is perfectly weighted or a bit underweighted at the beginning of the dive will descend slowly and will have more trouble descending at the beginning of the dive than at depth--the opposite of what you described.

Yes, as Stoo knows extremely well, you do lose weight as the air in the tank is depleted, but the little difference between that dive and previous dives when you used less air should not have caused the problems you seemed to have, which seemed to me to be more severe and happening sooner in the dive than would be indicated by being a kg underweighted. As Stoo also said, you may well have been underweighted, but it is hard for any of us to judge without being there and seeing a proper weight check.

---------- Post added October 12th, 2015 at 03:09 PM ----------

There is another possibility to consider.

I recently did the PADI Deep Diver specialty with a student who was a serious athlete. We had done a number of dives before that, and he showed good skill and excellent control of his breathing. And then we did a deep dive in a sink hole that got very dark at that depth. Well, everything changed. His eyes got very wide, and that nice breath control went out the window. He went through his gas much faster than he had before. I imagine that with all the rapid breathing, his lungs were probably a whole lot fuller than they had been on the previous dives as well, and that would have had a big effect on his buoyancy.

 

[luscioman]

OP make sure to mark in your log book what the equipment you had and what weight you used and were not enough. That way if you change your equipment in the future and you have some baseline to go with. As a rule I don't ask the DM how much weight I should use. I know that before it get it.

 

[Airburnr01]

Really. U dive 150-300 ft. And u cant do a weight chk? How is that possible.

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[danvolker]

Really. U dive 150-300 ft. And u cant do a weight chk? How is that possible.

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Re-read who said what again

 

[Iralub]

,

I went down easily. I started to have problem when I have used more air than usually. I think I just need 1 kg more.. but I that I will figure out with someone else

No I was not light on previous dives, and all the other dives where to short to almost empty the bottle. And I KNOW I should do a weight check, but I cannot dive alone, and my buddies did not want to spend time on that and neither did my instructors.

I had a similar problem on the deepest dive I've done (40m). Being nervous, plus dark narc plus spg hose starting to leak part way through the dive, meant at the end I was at about 30 bar on an al80 and too light. Did my SS hanging onto the spare tank they had lowered from the boat (as part of standard equipment on deep dives).
Maybe air management was the primary issue and weighing a secondary one?

 

[BlueOcean2015]

I had a similar problem on the deepest dive I've done (40m). Being nervous, plus dark narc plus spg hose starting to leak part way through the dive, meant at the end I was at about 30 bar on an al80 and too light. Did my SS hanging onto the spare tank they had lowered from the boat (as part of standard equipment on deep dives).
Maybe air management was the primary issue and weighing a secondary one?

That might be true. Maybee I started having problems when I started to think I was too light, and got nervoues about that because I was not sure ..
about my weigthning.

---------- Post added October 13th, 2015 at 03:16 AM ----------

Really. U dive 150-300 ft. And u cant do a weight chk? How is that possible.

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Again, I am taking a course and it is not a part of the program. So when exactly should I do this check, when I can not dive alone?

 

[RJP]

Again, I am taking a course and it is not a part of the program. So when exactly should I do this check, when I can not dive alone?

If your weighing is off... fixing it absolutely is part of the program.

If your instructor and your buddies are unwilling to spend a few minutes helping you with this, they need to be replaced.