Wreck Diver Certification (Blindfolded reel-in)

[NauticalNick]

Sounds like it was a task-loading drill meant to be stressful. In actual practice, you'd leave the line and just exit. Come back with more gas for a cleanup dive.

Or, if you know it'll always be silty (i.e., it's tight), then you'd be bumping things enough for reference that buoyancy will be easy enough.

But hey, you got it done. Nice job!

Thanks very much. I think you might have been correct on the stress-test as the instructor advised my before the dive that the shellfish featured everywhere at the dive site were very sharp before the dive as well.

Agreed with your point as well in that I would just leave the line and follow it out in a real life situation.

 

[NauticalNick]

I’d love to hear the instructors thoughts on this.

It better have been a stress test and not what they are teaching as best practice.

How do you protect your head if both hands are busy taking line in?

I think it might have been. They also advised me that the test area was filled with sharp coral / shells beforehand which ratcheted up the stress.

I'm not fussed about the stress test as I appreciate it's useful it's more a matter of I wasn't sure what the expected standard was and I came out thinking I did very poorly.

 

[NauticalNick]

Another trick if you're using a spool is to hold the exit side hand still and wind the spool toward it across your body. That minimizes the accelerate-coast cycle that happens when winding with the exit hand (spool fairly stationary).

That's exactly what i ended up doing as reeling it tightly while remaining buoyant proved to be impossible. I wasn't sure if the expectation was for me to perfectly reel myself as I glided through the water as inevitably my momentum would pull me forward faster than I could reel and then the line became slack again.

 

[SmashMonkey]

Hi all,

Not sure if looking for advice or just encouragement but for one of my wreck certification dives I had to do the blindfolded reel-in (simulating coming out of a silted-out wreck with your reel fully wound back up) and while I barely got it done, it was an absolute disaster. The test was in shallow open water with a non-linear line path (bit of zig-zagging back and forth) and I got it done just before I ran out of gas. It was by far the hardest thing I have had to do in scuba so far, my buoyancy was all over the place (it's normally okay) and I guess just looking for tips to get better at this as keeping the line tight in particular was very hard to do.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Is this for recreational basic wreck course or technical advanced wreck course? When I went through advanced wreck the #1 rule was the team to exit the wreck and get back to the surface alive. You made it out alive so good job! In complete darkness, 4 x light failure (both divers' lights and backups fail), silt out blind exit we would quickly terminate the reel; and leave it behind; and the team would contact the guideline; and bump and go blind exit. Last thing we want is make one emergency into two emergencies by getting entangled in the line; or lost buddy; or SAC rate increases and either diver OOA. The other thing is, if it truly is a total darkness emergency exit, we never pull out the line. If unbeknownst to the reel diver, a team member somehow gets separated during the blind exit, now they are lost inside the wreck with no lights and no line. A $200 reel is not worth dying for.

TBH perfect buoyancy, trim and propulsion is always the correct answer in overhead.

 

[tursiops]

What agency/certification was this for? On which dive?

 

[boulderjohn]

I think some people are misunderstanding the original post.

• He was practicing the skill in open water, not on a dive in a wreck.
• He was asking for tips on handling the reel better.
• He was not asking about what to do if he was running out of gas while using the reel in a wreck.

 

[NauticalNick]

What agency/certification was this for? On which dive?

PADI recreational wreck diver. Dive 2. It was lay line, reel it back in and then lay line and reel it back in blindfolded.

 

[NauticalNick]

Is this for recreational basic wreck course or technical advanced wreck course? When I went through advanced wreck the #1 rule was the team to exit the wreck and get back to the surface alive. You made it out alive so good job! In complete darkness, 4 x light failure (both divers' lights and backups fail), silt out blind exit we would quickly terminate the reel; and leave it behind; and the team would contact the guideline; and bump and go blind exit. Last thing we want is make one emergency into two emergencies by getting entangled in the line; or lost buddy; or SAC rate increases and either diver OOA. The other thing is, if it truly is a total darkness emergency exit, we never pull out the line. If unbeknownst to the reel diver, a team member somehow gets separated during the blind exit, now they are lost inside the wreck with no lights and no line. A $200 reel is not worth dying for.

TBH perfect buoyancy, trim and propulsion is always the correct answer in overhead.

It was a PADI recreational wreck course.

 

[NauticalNick]

I think some people are misunderstanding the original post.

• He was practicing the skill in open water, not on a dive in a wreck.
• He was asking for tips on handling the reel better.
• He was not asking about what to do if he was running out of gas while using the reel in a wreck.

It was on a wreck dive, just not with penetration. Think an old wreck that had broken up with the line tied off at various points across the broken up wreck. You're correct as well in that the OOA was a near result but not the point of the test. It just took me a long time and my breathing rate was high as I struggled through it.

 

[boulderjohn]

I'm not fussed about the stress test as I appreciate it's useful it's more a matter of I wasn't sure what the expected standard was and I came out thinking I did very poorly

Unless things have changed since I retired, working with a reel is part of dive #3, and there is nothing in the standard about being blindfolded. Under PADI rules, the instructor cannot require you to do the blindfold skill successfully in order to complete the course, since it is not part of the standards.