What is the deepest you can do an OOA?

[gangrel441]

Better listen to him Soggy. He is a master diver after all.

You arguing about last resorts? Don't need any kind of a cert to see the options when they are limited.

Never once did I say that a diver should do a CESA when another option is available. But there is more to a CESA than holding your breath and bolting for the surface. If you haven't practiced it, you are disregarding the skill.

 

[JeffG]

You arguing about last resorts? Don't need any kind of a cert to see the options when they are limited.

Never once did I say that a diver should do a CESA when another option is available. But there is more to a CESA than holding your breath and bolting for the surface. If you haven't practiced it, you are disregarding the skill.

You can practice your CESA all you want. I, on the other hand, have better things to do.

 

[gangrel441]

Dive more, you might find out.

You're right. Because the more you dive and the more redundant your equipment is, the less human you are. Eventually, you become impervious to errors in judgement or simple brain farts. You am become Borg.

Whatever.

 

[JeffG]

You're right. Because the more you dive and the more redundant your equipment is, the less human you are. Eventually, you become impervious to errors in judgement or simple brain farts. You am become Borg.

Whatever.

Reading comprehension isn't your gig is it?

 

[captain]

Such as ???

Do you think having better CESA skills might have saved Zak? Rob? Might have kept Kimber from getting hurt?

Give us some examples of these people you refer to ...

Have you ever actually had to deal with an in-water emergency? If so, would you describe what happened and how you dealt with it?

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

You see a lot of news about the gun used in a crime, you see very little about the gun that prevented a crime.

 

[all4scuba05]

...this coming from the guy who solo dives and same-ocean-buddy dives with less than a year of experience.

No. It's coming from a guy who got certified a year and a half ago and is coming up on dive 90. I don't just sit here typing. I'm in there diving. With or without a buddy. I dive it the way I see best until convinced otherwise. You rely on others to save your _ss way too much. I don't scare easy. I learn as much as I can and go do it. I don't live in fear so maybe that's one of my faults. I firefight and dive. My family thinks I'm suicidal because of that. Hell some are scared to drive in NY. You ever Bungee Jump. Well I have. No buddy going help me there. I depend on the cord to keep me from splatting into the next life. Don't judge me by the dive numbers, plenty of idiots here with nothing but numbers.

 

[TCDiver1]

You see a lot of news about the gun used in a crime, you see very little about the gun that prevented a crime.

Or about the majority of them which won't be involved in either.

 

[Soggy]

Have you ever actually had to deal with an in-water emergency? If so, would you describe what happened and how you dealt with it?

I'll tell a story...not a biggy and not what I would qualify as an emergency, because it was just handled...

Most recently, I was breathing a stage bottle on a shallow, recreational dive (we were saving our backgas for the next day). About 10 minutes into the dive, I started hearing hissing and then saw bubbles exploding all around me. I stopped breathing for a moment to listen to where the noise was coming from before going into an all-out valve shutdown. I couldn't tell where the sound was coming from, so I started reaching for my valves, took a breath and got nothing but water. It was at this moment that I saw my stage reg flailing around out of the corner of my eye and a long hose in my face. I switched to my backup reg before I needed to take the reg, but despite inhaling water, and being only in a few feet of water, there was no need to go to the surface.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Please elaborate,

OK ... earlier you wrote ...

On a recreational dive to 80 feet you've determined your rock bottom turn point to be 750 psi. On your next breath you feel an unussually high resistance to inhalation. On the one after that there's not much. Your buddy is ahead and slightly below you working into a current, absolutely insistant on catching that lobster and so maybe not quite as attentive as normal. The only mistake you've made, is not knowing that your gauge is broken.

First of all, unless you were diving large doubles then your first mistake was determining your rock bottom to be 750 psi. On even a large single cylinder such as a 130 it should be much higher than that for a depth of 80 feet.

My first question would be "what do you mean by rock bottom?" Are you calculating how much gas it would take to get both you and your buddy safely to the surface using the standard rules of rock bottom (e.g. 30 fpm with stops)? Did you start by asking yourself, if either myself or my buddy lost our gas RIGHT NOW, would the other buddy have enough to get us both to the surface safely? If the answer to either of those questions is no, then you are not calculating rock bottom. That's your first mistake ... you're too deep for the reserve you're allowing.

Second mistake ... if you cannot get your buddy's attention then you are effectively diving solo. Now, you can choose to do that ... but in that case you should be diving a redundant supply. You're bug hunting, so you knew in advance that there'd be times when you and your buddy would be swimming in a formation that would not allow for constant surveillance of each other. So plan your configuration accordingly.

Out here we also bug hunt ... but for dungeness crabs rather than lobsters. We have contingencies that account for depth, formation, "lost" buddy, etc. If we're going to 80 feet, we pretty much plan it as a solo dive and pack ponies.

Adherence to basic gas management rules would've prevented the need for a CESA in your situation ... even with the equipment failure that you experienced.

If this makes sense to you, and if you want to learn more, PM me your e-mail addy. I'll send you a paper I wrote on gas management that might help you understand better how to plan for such contingencies.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[JeffG]

I'll tell a story...not a biggy and not what I would qualify as an emergency, because it was just handled...

Another one.


I was doing a dive where the diver had her chin on her backup. She was so distracted she didn't realize that she had free-flowed her reg.

She was on a single tank and couldn't reach her valve.

I gave her my long hose, turned off her tank and allowed it to dethaw. Turned the tank back on, we were golden.

She didn't have to CESA.