What to do in the event that...

[Kingpatzer]

You're new, and diving will take pretty much all your attention just to be able to handle the stuff you were already taught. . . .

You are (or should be) be doing dives that are well within the no-decompression limit and are not in any sort of overhead environment, and are at depths where surfacing with your buddy at any time is a safe activity.

+a million

That encapsulates what you need to know.

Unless your OW instructor was negligent, you were taught the skills you need.

The skill most new divers fail to practice or employ most is the skill of saying "I'm sorry, but I told you before I got on this boat that I'm a newly OW certified diver, this dive <insert one or more of: is deeper than 60', involves an overhead environment, involves significant current, involves complicated shore entry, etc.> and is beyond my training level. Please take us to a dive site appropriate for me or refund my money, thanks."

Get that one right, and the rest will take care of themselves as you develop as a diver.

 

[aquaregia]

Did you not do OOA drills in your Open Water class?

In this case you would simply respond the same way.

It's one example of why practicing your skills is so important ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

I did plenty of OOA drills in many of my classes. I continue to do them every few fun dives, and with new buddies. I can reach my valves, and would not be uncomfortable turning off my own air in this situation. The idea of someone else touching my valve makes me bristle nonetheless.

 

[TSandM]

I don't want strangers touching my valves . . . but as a technically trained diver, I am QUITE comfortable with the idea of my teammates (who I have selected for their ability to act rationally and appropriately when problems occur) handling my valves in situations where it is called for.

 

[Lockdownx99]

That's what I said on page 4. Didn't you read my post???!!! Just kidding. Unfortunately the stuff you say is true. I TRY to just answer what an OP asks without philosophizing, but I'm probably guilty too once in a while. Guess it's the price you pay to have such an informative open forum.

haha. i guess i should have read all 10 pages but i couldnt stand reading all the crazy posts on how he should have learned it elsewhere instead of a discussion forum specifically designed just for that type of conversation. its ok though, i got how i feel about all of these invalids off my chest and now i can go on helping more than hurting my fellow divers. thanks to the ones that actually contributed positively to this thread and not negatively.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I did plenty of OOA drills in many of my classes. I continue to do them every few fun dives, and with new buddies. I can reach my valves, and would not be uncomfortable turning off my own air in this situation. The idea of someone else touching my valve makes me bristle nonetheless.

Then that's the solution for you. There really is no "one size fits all" response to this sort of thing ... it completely depends on the divers involved and the circumstances. The point of the exercise is to reduce or eliminate stressors, and to do what most closely complies with your training and comfort level.

The objective is to reach the surface without doing something that makes matters worse. That's where judgement comes into play ... and the best decision to make is the one that accomplishes the objective in the way that you are best equipped to handle. For most new divers, turning it into an OOA exercise puts them into familiar territory, since we all train for OOA in our basic class ... but rarely do we learn how to deal with the stresses induced by a freeflowing regulator. So you take the unfamiliar out of the picture and deal with the situation in a way that most closely matches what you were trained to do.

As with most things scuba, the only truly correct answer is "it depends" ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[flots am]

this is so ridiculous. the guy asked a simple question. he should be given an answer. YES the LDS should have gone over some of the what ifs. i agree. BUT, they cannot possibly go over every singe one of them. there are plenty of unique things that have probably only happened a hand full of times to a limited number of divers and that is probably what this guy is after. what is your experience and what did you do to counter it. thats it. im sure glad i dont have to dive with any of the twits on this board because im certain it would be a very quiet experience. i bet every time i ask where you have dived at in the past, you would expect me to have sifted through the archives to find your previous posts.

The point is that this is Basic SCUBA and the OP was asking a question that he already had the answer to.

Q: "What do I do if xxx happens?"

At this level of training, the answer is:

A: "If something bad happens, safely end the dive as you were trained."

If the same question were asked by a frequent diver, with continously practiced skills in "Advanced SCUBA" or "Cave Diving" or "PSD Diving" or any of a number of other places, the answers would be quite different. However in Basic SCUBA, when asked by someone with less than 24 dives, the safe, reliable answer is shown above.

And if a certified diver wasn't taught how to safely ascend with their buddy, share air, ditch weights and do a manual BC inflate, yes, they do need to get a refund and retake the class. These are part of the absolute minimum skill set required to be certified.

flots.

 

[Mike Boswell]

My Titan LX regulator had a free-flow some months ago. The flow was not a blast of air, but just a little faster than I could breathe, so it was always bubbling. I shook it and purged it and banged it but nothing would stop the flow, so I just used it and suffered. But what a PITA!!!

This leaky reg problem has happened several times over the last two years, and so I bought a spare 2nd stage that I keep on the boat. (I'm pretty sure the problem is very fine sand, because the free flows tend to happen right after we do a shore dive through the La Jolla surf zone, and are always fixed by a simple disassembly and cleaning.)

Years ago I owned a "Calypso J" regulator and NEVER, EVER, had a single problem. What is it with these newer regs and all the freeflows???

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

The point is that this is Basic SCUBA and the OP was asking a question that he already had the answer to.

Q: "What do I do if xxx happens?"

At this level of training, the answer is:

A: "If something bad happens, safely end the dive as you were trained."

If the same question were asked by a frequent diver, with continously practiced skills in "Advanced SCUBA" or "Cave Diving" or "PSD Diving" or any of a number of other places, the answers would be quite different. However in Basic SCUBA, when asked by someone with less than 24 dives, the safe, reliable answer is shown above.

And if a certified diver wasn't taught how to safely ascend with their buddy, share air, ditch weights and do a manual BC inflate, yes, they do need to get a refund and retake the class. These are part of the absolute minimum skill set required to be certified.

flots.

I'll disagree in this respect ... and from the perspective of someone who trains divers how to dive ... if you follow standard agency curriculum (regardless of agency), the OW class focuses on "what" to do ... with little emphasis on what circumstances may make that skill applicable. The training usually boils down to a couple of demonstrations in a pool and one pass in OW at performing the "skill" in a controlled environment.

However, in the real world, the need to implement that skill may bear little resemblance to what you did in your OW class ... and regardless of your training, your ability to recognize the appropriate application of the skill and implement it in anything resembling an orderly manner is going to vary wildly ... depending on your ability to react calmly, the quality of your training (on both your and your instructor's part), and whether or not you've actually practiced that skill since your OW class ended.

Discussions about "what if" can add value, in that they can help give the newer diver some real-world situations to contemplate that were not discussed in class.

Classes ... even the good ones ... are an artificial environment. And they can't possibly cover all contingencies. That's why discussions like this one really do matter.

For those who keep telling people to "go back to your OW instructor", I would request that you resist the urge to post that and just click to the next thread ... your comments won't really contribute anything useful, and only serve to discourage people from asking questions. That is about as counterproductive a use of your time (and ours) as any I can think of.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

My Titan LX regulator had a free-flow some months ago. The flow was not a blast of air, but just a little faster than I could breathe, so it was always bubbling. I shook it and purged it and banged it but nothing would stop the flow, so I just used it and suffered. But what a PITA!!!

This leaky reg problem has happened several times over the last two years, and so I bought a spare 2nd stage that I keep on the boat.

Years ago I owned a "Calypso J" regulator and NEVER, EVER, had a single problem. What is it with these newer regs and all the freeflows???

... it's the never-ending pursuit for the best WOB (work-of-breathing) ratio ... the trade-off is always that the easier the reg is to breathe, the more likely it is to free-flow ...

.... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[chazrich]

No it has nothing to do with that. They SHOULD have gotten that training. If they didn't they really should get hold of the instructor to express their concerns, and hopefully the instructor would agree to help the OP out with any concerns.

But I don't recall the Op requesting a critique of him/her or his/her OW Instruction.

I'm not an instructor, and I'm sure as hell not going to try to 'instruct' someone on a public forum, since they havent gotten the proper training yet, and if something would happen from 'instruction' I or someone else gives, the past has shown that somehow you could be held liable for that.

Then why bother to answer the question?

So while it may seem like a glib response, I was serious as a heart attack. And again, they are taught very simply, and one does need to practice skills everytime they dive.

I try to pick SOME skill or 2 every dive and sometime during the dive, we stop and perform the skills. I tend to focus on ones that I just dont like, since those are the ones I think I need work on.

Good for you. . . and in my opinion you just shared your technique - practicing one or two skills every dive. Wouldn't it have been more constructive to just say this in response to the OP's question?

But I stick by my guns if the OP didnt get those answers in the pool training, they were shortchanged and should not accept it.

I think only the OP has the option to decide whether or not he/she was shortchanged, don't you?

The "I'm better than you" attitude I see in nearly every forum here is the primary reason I rarely post my own questions. I'm not saying this poster is acting that way - I don't know you - but you yourself mentioned how glib the response seemed. If you know that, why do it?

Must everything in these forums be confrontational and condescending? I personally joined these forums to learn, not to be told what I don't know by someone who doesn't know me.