When good dives go BAD! Lessons Learned?

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Pez7378
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When good dives go BAD! Lessons Learned?

Post by Pez7378 »

I'm not really sure if this will work, but I believe it can..........

We frequently tell newer divers that they need to go out and dive to get experience. They go out, make mistakes learn lessons and gain the experience they need to become better divers. Often times, they go out, and execute their plan over and over without a single problem and gain experience simply by logging well planned and well executed dives.

But what about the experience gained when things go wrong? How many of us, have learned a lifetime of lessons by the experience of a "bad" dive?

We generally consider ourselves to be "scuba educators". We pride ourselves on our ability to impart our wisdom on those that follow in our footsteps. But what is it that we don't share? How many of us, have learned the "hard" lessons, but are too afraid to tell the story for fear of judgment? I say to heck with it, these stories need to be told.

It's been said, that the best dives, are the dives that scared the crap out of you. Those are the dives where the lessons you learned were invaluable. Lessons you couldn't gain from reading a book, or talking to an instructor. These are the dives where you gained REAL experience. They say that which does not kill you makes you stronger. The problem is that few people talk about those dives. They don't want to be judged by the infamous scuba police. They don't want to be judged by other divers or their own instructors so they remain silent, and deny the rest of the community an opportunity to learn.

This is a NJZ. (NO JUDGEMENT ZONE) Tell your story from the perspective of another, or tell it how it was. I don't care. I just want to hear, how a good dive went bad, and what were the lessons learned.

I’ll start. I’ve got at least four such experiences I could share. I’ll share one of the two that are the most significant for me, and perhaps I'll include the others at a later time. I'm sure I'll include the Omar dive.........
I signed up for a boat dive shortly after I completed AOW. I chose to join another pair, and our plan was to go down to around 110’. The site bottomed out at around 92’ and one of our team swam away from the rocks to get deeper. At around 95’ or so, the “leader” of the group decided that he could not find his way back to the rocks and began an ascent to the surface. I had no choice but to follow. The other two members of the team ascended from 95’ at a rate that I was not comfortable with, so I slowed my ascent and quickly separated myself from the team. I was alone, somewhere in the San Juan Islands, mid water, in current, flying by gauge as I had no visual reference. At around 30 ft I was somehow re-united with one of the team members who had lost contact with the other on the ascent. We completed our safety stop and surfaced to find the current had pushed us very far away from the boat.

Lessons learned: I can control my fear. At least I could on this dive. There would be others that tested this theory. Bob Bailey’s mid water navigation class is a valuable skill that basically kept me from freaking out. Even if someone tells you they know the site, refer to your compass regularly throughout the dive and know how to get back to the exit point. Include an ascent strategy in the dive plan or discuss with each other what you will do in case……. Learn to use, and carry an SMB. Confidence. I learned that I can do a mid water ascent if I need to, which gave me a lot more confidence in my diving.
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dwashbur
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Re: When good dives go BAD! Lessons Learned?

Post by dwashbur »

Definitely a great idea. I have a couple of stories, one very recent and I can't remember if I already shared it. So if I did, it's redundant all over again.

Anyway, the first is at Redondo. We weren't particularly deep, over by the Bug, just poking around and having fun, but I also knew my wife's regulator had been acting up a bit so I was keeping a fairly close eye on her. At one point she motioned to it and gave the "something's wrong" wag of the hand. I asked if she wanted to go up and she said "no." We kept exploring, but I could see she was having more and more trouble with it. Finally I asked if her reg was okay and she said "no." I grabbed my octo and basically forced it on her, then motioned to Chenari that we were going up NOW. To her credit, she didn't question, even though at the time she couldn't see that Kathy was using my octopus. We linked hands and made a careful ascent, with mid-water safety stop (only the second time we've done that) and got to the surface.

What I learned: well, for starters, my mind was reinforced with the fact that my family members are more important than any dive. But more important for this thread, if I think one of my buddies is having an air emergency or even just an air problem, make them take the working regulator even if I have to shove it in their mouth (I didn't, btw). If necessary, I can endure a tongue-lashing later.

More recent: a week ago at Cove 2 we descended at the buoy and something didn't feel right. I think I did share this before, but I had forgotten to put any air in my dry suit and was getting squeezed like an orange in a juicer. Or, to use an expression that Janna just gave me, I was feeling "Saran wrapped." (Gotta love it, thanks Janna!) I almost surfaced, but did the "stop, breathe, think, breathe, act" process and that was when I realized my bonehead mistake. What I learned here is essentially the same thing Pez said: I can control my fear. There's a reason why the "stop, think, act" is pounded into our heads: IT WORKS!

Along those lines, the most important thing I have learned both from my own experience and from reading about diving accidents and such is this:

The one thing that kills more divers than anything else is basic panic. If I stay under control there's a good chance I'll get out of this alive. If I panic, I'm fish food. It really is that simple. Remembering it underwater when something is going haywire is another matter, of course.............
Dave

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Re: When good dives go BAD! Lessons Learned?

Post by LCF »

Good thread, Chris.

I have several.

The first was a training dive that I signed up for after Fundies. It was in January or February, and Steve was going to do two dives, one at 3 and one at 5:30. I didn't want to do a training dive in the dark, so I signed up for the earlier one. The day before the dive, he sent out the list of people, and I realized that everybody else signed up for the 3pm dive was WAY ahead of me in experience and training. At that point, I considered backing out, but then I decided these were training dives, and it was okay for people of different levels to go on them. But it made me nervous.

Then we got delayed getting into the water, because somebody was tied up in traffic. By the time we were getting wet, it was twilight, which meant much of the dive would be in the dark. Again, I thought about backing out, but some part of me said I was just being chicken, and I needed to stretch my limits a bit.

I got paired up with what I thought was a tech diver (he was in doubles, anyway) and we went down to do S-drills in ten feet of dark water. I couldn't pull it off. I kept losing buoyancy control and getting disoriented in the dark, and eventually Charles went completely over backwards trying to stay with me. He was angry and frustrated, and I wanted to cry. Steve said, "You guys don't HAVE to do the drills if you don't want to. But this is what WE do. WE do drills at the start of the dive." So, at that point, I was going to get the drills done or die trying, and we staggered through them. We then went on tour, and I was off balance and disoriented a lot of the time, and by the time we came to the end of the dive and were to do a free ascent on a bag, I had figured out I couldn't read my Mosquito in the dark, and I had no depth information. I got off the line, got COMPLETELY disoriented, began yoyoing wildly, and had to be escorted to the surface by Steve, where I promptly lost my weightbelt. It caught on my crotch strap, and Steve went to fix it, so here I am, lying on my back on the surface, desperately wanting to bawl my eyes out, with my instructor crawling between my legs to fish out my weight belt -- adding enormous insult to injury.

What I learned: You need to stretch your limits to learn, but pushing too far just results in getting scared and demoralized and no progress. When your gut says don't go, don't go, and there is no shame in backing out. I had SO many opportunities to avoid this dive . . . I didn't night dive again for almost a year.

Another one was a dive off a charter, right after I changed all my gear to backplate and wing and can light. I had too long a cord on the can light, and got it wrapped around my inflator, and couldn't dump gas when I got light, and ended up in an uncontrolled ascent from 70'. Lessons learned: Be very cautious about dives when you have changed equipment. Know how ALL the gas dumps on your suit and BC work, and be facile with them. Never give up trying to control your buoyancy, even when it seems like things are beyond salvage.

Another was going off the edge of Day Island Wall, sailing into the dark, and I probably laughed or something and flooded my mask. I kept trying to clear it, and it wouldn't clear; eventually, deprived of visual reference, I got vertigo and the world began to spin on me. I felt like I was doing somersaults (in reality, I did one big back flip) and I realized I had forgotten to ask one important question in the briefing of the dive -- "How deep is the bottom of the wall?" Blind, tumbling, in the dark, having lost my buddy and unsure how far I could fall, I came really close to panic. Then I felt rock under my hand, and I grabbed it and dumped EVERYTHING from my wing, on the theory that I didn't know whether the surface I was holding onto was vertical or horizontal, but being negative would at least make me lie on it or hang from it, and then I could focus on figuring out why my mask would not clear. It turned out I was lying on the shelf at the top of the wall, and when I could see again, Bob was lying on the shelf next to me with a VERY puzzled expression on his face. He had no idea what had just happened.

Lessons learned: ALWAYS know the parameters of the topography you are diving. Keep your breathing steady and keep thinking -- panic CAN be held at bay. Open your eyes when your mask is flooded -- you will at least get SOME reference information by doing so. SIGNAL YOUR BUDDY when you are in distress! He or she may not realize what is going on for you, or how bad it is. The first thing that happens when you get highly stressed is losing awareness of your team, and forgetting to let them know you have a problem, but they are a big resource.

Lots of others dives that have not gone as planned -- getting lost, hitting current, sinking the boat -- but those are the ones that scared me.
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Re: When good dives go BAD! Lessons Learned?

Post by Norris »

Mine is rather simple but it was THEN that I realised that my panic button is not easily pushed. It was my second unsupervised dive and it was me and my friend who was certified with me. We were n00bs at redondo out by the end of the pilings and we had decided to descend. When I grabbed my mask from around my neck and put it on over my face the mask somehow grabbed my BC deflator and I couldnt figure out how to untangle it. Air was leaving and I was sinking. I did not have my regulator in front of me.
All I was thinking is that I am about to be underwater, and I'm going to need to breath. I took my attention off of untangling my mask and placed it on grabbing my regulator and prepare for an unplanned descent. I was able to locate the Reg, get it in my mouth, and it was then (about 3 feet under) that my buddy approached me and untangled me. This was my second dive and I wasnt properly weighted either, so I was going down with lungs full of air.
The story doesnt seem that scary, but the feeling in my stomach during the time was prominant. The important thing I learned is just like stated above. STOP THINK ACT. I knew I was going underwater, and would need to breath.
It also makes me appreciate the DIR way of the regulator.
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Re: When good dives go BAD! Lessons Learned?

Post by Octoloco »

My husband and I dropped to the runabout at the Mukilteo T-dock. No big deal except that Larry got a little narced and decided that his compass heading couldn’t be right; he thought he must have bumped it. Even though we had set and agreed on the settings of our compasses before the dive, my reaction to his change of direction was to trust that he knew better than me since his navigation skills were better than mine. Without a compass heading out at the runabout/knoll area, you’re in serious trouble; you have to go deeper to get shallower so we had no idea where we were exactly. Ended up doing an open water assent from 125 fsw, not knowing if the current was carrying us nearer and nearer to the ferry. Thankfully we didn’t go full on panic and we made a 3 minute safety stop in open water, then swam in.

Lesson learned: I needed to trust my own compass and instincts rather than letting another diver change what I know is right. And I needed to be sure of my training or take more of it.
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Re: When good dives go BAD! Lessons Learned?

Post by Paulicarp »

Pez7378 wrote:I'm not really sure if this will work, but I believe it can..........

But what is it that we don't share? How many of us, have learned the "hard" lessons, but are too afraid to tell the story for fear of judgment? I say to heck with it, these stories need to be told.
Great thread, PEZ! Thanks for getting this one started. I obviously don't have anything to add yet, but this kind of practical education is one of the things that makes NWDC the awesome resource that it is.
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Re: When good dives go BAD! Lessons Learned?

Post by Jenbowes »

GREAT thread, PEZ and really fabulous for me as a newbie!

Lynne, your post about night diving is particularly apropos for me, as I'm starting the AOW class this week, which includes night diving. I haven't even known what to expect up to this point, and your post was awesome!

My first and most poignant lesson was on my third OW class dive. I had no idea about how drastic a change in buoyancy can occur w/in just a few feet, nor exactly what that "felt" like, because it's not experienced in 10 feet of pool water. Also, as seems common for newbies, I was overweighted, so there was an immense amount of air in my BC to keep me from staying plastered to the sound floor.

We were at about 40 feet and the volunteer assistant went to the other side of the pipe joint, and beckoned for my buddy and I to swim over it to come down on the other side. As I swam up and started to go over, I started ascending more than I anticipated. I turned to swim down, effectively turning myself into a dart and despite vigorous swimming efforts, I shot to the surface. Once there, I located the bubbles from below, dumped the air from my BC, and followed them back to my class, which had all assembled by this point, and just before my instructor came up to find me.

The good news? I was not ridiculously deep, nor had I been down for very long (less than feet, 9 minutes), so there weren't any horrendous consequences. Also, I learned that I needed to be better weighted AND it was a great lesson about how to use my BC. I'm still learning trim and buoyancy, for sure, but I haven't gone shooting up to the top again.
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Re: When good dives go BAD! Lessons Learned?

Post by dwashbur »

Sort of a follow-up to LCF's excellent first story:

During our second OW dive I was doing out-of-air skills with my wife. She was the out-of-air and I was sharing. We were using rented gear, of course, and the alternate air source of choice for this shop was Air II. I confidently gave Kathy my reg, grabbed the other mouthpiece, put it in my mouth, inhaled and got a load of water. I knew something was seriously wrong but figured maybe it just needed clearing. So I gave a good blow out and tried again. This time I got nothing. So now I have no air in the mouthpiece and no air in my lungs. I could see Kathy's regulator bobbing next to her head so I grabbed it, gave it back to her, took mine and panted into it for a few seconds. I glanced to my left at our instructor with one of those "Huh???" expressions on my face. He waved his snorkel. I wanted to bash myself in the head. When we tried the exercise again I got the right piece of equipment this time and everything went fine. We've all been using octos ever since.

Anyway, that's not the story. The story is on the next dive. We dropped as usual and were following a rope from one platform to another (we were at Blue Lake in western Utah, by the way). Along the rope I was really feeling on the edge of vertigo, knew my breathing wasn't right, and basically knew I was teetering on the brink of panic. But I wanted this so bad! Nevertheless, by the time we got to the platform I couldn't stand it any more. I motioned to the instructor that something was wrong and I needed go to up. He found another instructor to take care of my wife and took me up. I sat out the rest of that dive and the next one. There was one more dive coming up, and it would be my last chance to finish my open water this trip. I sought out that instructor and talked with him at length, wondering if perhaps I had just lost my nerve because of the incident with the snorkel. He took the time to give me as much counsel as I needed, listened, and did everything else that was necessary to get me back in the water. If not for him, I probably wouldn't be a diver today.

WHAT I LEARNED: LCF, I understand you being close to tears, especially with somebody like that ragging on you. But we've become adamant about the most basic rule: ANY DIVER CAN CALL THE DIVE, ANY TIME, FOR ANY REASON OR NO REASON, WITH NO CONDEMNATION OR REPROACHMENT. If I see somebody treating another diver the way this person was treating you, they're in danger of a serious b*tch-slap from yours truly. Nobody HAS to dive! Anybody who acts that way toward a new diver has forgotten where they came from, and somebody needs to snip their air hose and remind them. The first time we went to Monterey, Chenari didn't like the look of the waves and called the dive before we even got to the shop. My wife was grousing a bit and I reminded her of the basic rule. She said, "But that doesn't mean I can't gripe." I snapped, "That's exactly what it means. That's what 'no condemnation' means. It means you accept that she called the dive, and shut up." Obviously, as we've gained more experience, called dives are fewer and farther between. But we still live and breathe that rule: any diver, any time, any reason, and the rest of us accept it without question. It's made our diving life a lot simpler and a lot more fun.

The other thing I learned: a good, compassionate instructor is worth triple his weight in gold!
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Re: When good dives go BAD! Lessons Learned?

Post by Jenbowes »

If I see somebody treating another diver the way this person was treating you, they're in danger of a serious b*tch-slap from yours truly.
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Re: When good dives go BAD! Lessons Learned?

Post by CaptnJack »

LCF wrote:I got paired up with what I thought was a tech diver (he was in doubles, anyway) and we went down to do S-drills in ten feet of dark water. I couldn't pull it off. I kept losing buoyancy control and getting disoriented in the dark, and eventually Charles went completely over backwards trying to stay with me. He was angry and frustrated, and I wanted to cry. Steve said, "You guys don't HAVE to do the drills if you don't want to. But this is what WE do. WE do drills at the start of the dive." So, at that point, I was going to get the drills done or die trying, and we staggered through them. We then went on tour, and I was off balance and disoriented a lot of the time, and by the time we came to the end of the dive and were to do a free ascent on a bag, I had figured out I couldn't read my Mosquito in the dark, and I had no depth information. I got off the line, got COMPLETELY disoriented, began yoyoing wildly, and had to be escorted to the surface by Steve, where I promptly lost my weightbelt. It caught on my crotch strap, and Steve went to fix it, so here I am, lying on my back on the surface, desperately wanting to bawl my eyes out, with my instructor crawling between my legs to fish out my weight belt -- adding enormous insult to injury.
dwashbur wrote: WHAT I LEARNED: LCF, I understand you being close to tears, especially with somebody like that ragging on you. But we've become adamant about the most basic rule: ANY DIVER CAN CALL THE DIVE, ANY TIME, FOR ANY REASON OR NO REASON, WITH NO CONDEMNATION OR REPROACHMENT. If I see somebody treating another diver the way this person was treating you, they're in danger of a serious b*tch-slap from yours truly. Nobody HAS to dive! Anybody who acts that way toward a new diver has forgotten where they came from, and somebody needs to snip their air hose and remind them. The first time we went to Monterey, Chenari didn't like the look of the waves and called the dive before we even got to the shop. My wife was grousing a bit and I reminded her of the basic rule. She said, "But that doesn't mean I can't gripe." I snapped, "That's exactly what it means. That's what 'no condemnation' means. It means you accept that she called the dive, and shut up." Obviously, as we've gained more experience, called dives are fewer and farther between. But we still live and breathe that rule: any diver, any time, any reason, and the rest of us accept it without question. It's made our diving life a lot simpler and a lot more fun.
I'm not going to make excuses for LCF's dive (I wasn't there). When I lead dives I go for the lowest common denominator for sure and I don't think that happened with her so that's one issue right there. The second being that LCF probably shouldn't have been certified at that point (or at best barely, I think she'll agree) and it took alot more diving before she was comfortable in the water (at night or otherwise). It can be challenging when you have an instabuddy who has dramatically different expectations than you do. The key is recognizing when and how you need to communicate (which goes both ways). Being thrust into a mentor/DM role when you didn't expect it, having unrealistic expectations of your new diver buddy, or trying to muscle your way through a dive that's over your head are all ways for everyone to have a bad day.
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Re: When good dives go BAD! Lessons Learned?

Post by gcbryan »

As a new diver I had only done one night dive and that was with my AOW class.

I ran into the president of a local dive club and he invited me to come along on a night dive to the I-beams at Cove2. I mentioned that I was new and had only been on one night dive but told him that I did want to go. I had only been to 100 fsw one time as well.

As we got deeper all I could focus on was staying close to him and staring at my computer and spg. As soon as we got there I was signaling him that my computer was in the "yellow" zone. Of course any time you are at 100 fsw it's more or less in the yellow zone but I didn't appreciate that. I was also a big time air hog on this dive. Soon I'm showing him my spg and it's at 1,000 psi but he just signals OK and keeps on going.

Finally at 800 psi I showed him again and started back toward the shore and he followed. When we got on the surface he said he couldn't believe how fast I went through my air.

Lessons learned: Even if you are a newer diver and even if you are with a more experienced diver you are still the only one who is responsible for your dive. At this point I was as they say in a little over my head for my experience level.

I also assumed that the head of a local dive club would be a more responsible person to dive with than turned out to be the case. Not that he really did anything wrong other than allowing me to go on the dive in the first place but given that I had described my lack of experience I would assume that he would have been more responsible or at the least more understanding.
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Re: When good dives go BAD! Lessons Learned?

Post by LCF »

Oh, I really need to clarify my post. NOBODY treated me badly on that awful night dive. My buddy was very frustrated and irritated at the beginning, but he didn't abuse or mistreat ME. I don't think Steve realized how demoralized I was, and being me, I certainly didn't tell him. He didn't yell at me or denigrate me for my appallingly bad performance on the dive, and the only time he showed impatience was the deep sigh he gave when I told him I'd lost my weight belt (but I think he thought he was going to have to scour the bottom for it, when it was still hung up on my harness). My buddy came and sat with me, as I sat on the seawall in the dark and tried not to cry, and talked about being a doctor's son and living up to high expectations. He could not have been kinder.

That dive was MY fault, and nobody else's. I could have called it before I went, before I got in the water, or when I was having so much trouble with the drills at the beginning. But I didn't get through a surgical residency by backing down from challenges. My big lesson from this dive was that diving is a place where you had better choose the challenges you take on carefully, and with a very realistic eye to where your current capabilities are. This was only one of several lessons from diving that have been difficult for me because of who I am.
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Re: When good dives go BAD! Lessons Learned?

Post by mz53480 »

Pez7378 wrote:
How many of us, have learned a lifetime of lessons by the experience of a "bad" dive?
I think it was dive #20 or so.....on a boat dive in hood canal during an algae bloom so the vis from 0-30fsw was almost nil.
I was with a group of 2 other divers.....the dive went fine but I was an air hog so at my appropriate time/pressure they sent me up to do my safety stop. So here I am just hanging vertical in about 20fsw.... and then I got BAD vertigo. :huge:
Felt like I was in a washing machine, twisting left & right. I remember saying to myself "ohhoo, stop putting quarters in, I want this ride to STOP!".
I know my breathing was faster than normal during this time, and I started to focus on my SPG to make sure my air consumption wasn't too fast. Even with looking at my SPG, the vertigo was still bad.
Finished the stop and got back on the boat and everything was ok.

Lesson learned: you can look up to see your bubbles as another reference. Not that I didn't know what up/down where in that particular instance, but on a later dive in a similar situation, it REALLY helped. That and if you can find the descent line, use that too!

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Re: When good dives go BAD! Lessons Learned?

Post by BASSMAN »

:goodpost:
This is what I've always liked about this board! You can share a bad dive experience and all you get from other members is...Thanks for sharing! :metal: Just don't do a typo and forget the "B" on my screen name! :angry:

When Tom Nic and I started diving three years ago, the one thing that worked great for both of us is, to ask each other,
"What went wrong? and what went well?" after every dive.
And now I think it has just become habit to do this after every dive. Rescue Diver course, helped reinforce that.

My first panic, was at Redondo, undernieth the Dive Pier. We were at the tail end of a great dive and as I came back, I decided to look around,after we finnished our safety stop, under the pier, in about 10 feet of water. All of a sudden, I had all of these bubbles all over my head and I freaked :eek: and went directly to the surface! Only to find out, I swam under one of those drains coming out of the Dive Pier. I thought I ruptured a hose or something. So as we talked about it, I learned how easy it was to become panicked and I was glad I was only at 10 feet of water and not deeper. Because as freaked out as I was, staying down to "Stop,Breath,Think and and Act" was not an option for me at that time. Thanks Tom =D> , for helping me work through that little "What the #@$& just happened? Dive, in my early dive experiences.

I like the, "Anyone at any time can thumb the dive at any time rule." Even if they or I just don't feel like it. It's always better to live for another dive on some other day than to test our boundries. :breakdance: and suffer what we all know, could be our last mistake of our physical Life. :smt119 "
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Re: When good dives go BAD! Lessons Learned?

Post by mz53480 »

BASSMAN wrote:Just don't do a typo and forget the "B" on my screen name!
:laughing3: :laughing3: :laughing3:
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Re: When good dives go BAD! Lessons Learned?

Post by LCF »

Actually, I think one of the greatest things about having had a panic or near-panic experience is that you recognize the symptoms when they start, and you have the ability to stop the process before it gets complete out of hand. What got me through that disorientation experience at Day Island Wall was two things: One, I had had a near panic in one of my OW dives, where I did the mask clearing skill and got a throat full of water, choked, and gave the instructor the thumb. She refused to let me go, so I had to choke down both the salt water and the panic, and learned that I COULD. Second, I had read tons of stories on a variety of boards, and I knew that keeping my breathing under control was key, and that I needed to keep thinking about how to solve the problem. So reading these sorts of stories can actually be of real, practical help when things start to go sour.
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Re: When good dives go BAD! Lessons Learned?

Post by BASSMAN »

LCF wrote: I had read tons of stories on a variety of boards, and I knew that keeping my breathing under control was key, and that I needed to keep thinking about how to solve the problem. So reading these sorts of stories can actually be of real, practical help when things start to go sour.

I agree! :thumb3d:
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Re: When good dives go BAD! Lessons Learned?

Post by Pez7378 »

I appreciate hearing the stories from those I know personally, look up to and respect. But for everyone who hasn't read it, this book is invaluable to all of us as we progress through our training. My copy is currently in the Philippines with Mariette but I should get it back this summer.

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Re: When good dives go BAD! Lessons Learned?

Post by spatman »

Pez7378 wrote:I appreciate hearing the stories from those I know personally, look up to and respect. But for everyone who hasn't read it, this book is invaluable to all of us as we progress through our training. My copy is currently in the Philippines with Mariette but I should get it back this summer.

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definitely a good book for new-ish divers. i have a copy if anyone wants to borrow it.
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Re: When good dives go BAD! Lessons Learned?

Post by selkie »

spatman wrote:
Pez7378 wrote:I appreciate hearing the stories from those I know personally, look up to and respect. But for everyone who hasn't read it, this book is invaluable to all of us as we progress through our training. My copy is currently in the Philippines with Mariette but I should get it back this summer.

Diver-Down-Michael-R-Ange
definitely a good book for new-ish divers. i have a copy if anyone wants to borrow it.
I have loaned my copy to at least four new-ish divers so far. It is also a good book for the diver that has become complacent. If we have been diving long enough we have all been bit in the butt by complacency. It is one of the reasons continuing education is so essential.
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Re: When good dives go BAD! Lessons Learned?

Post by Joshua Smith »

OK, I'll play. A while back, me and a couple buddies decided to scooter out to a target in the lake. Max depth was supposed to be 160'. Our entry wasn't directly in front of the target, so we had to take an angled approach to it- I set my compass directly for the target coordinates, and we scootered off into typical crappy lake visibility. It wasn't a huge scooter run, but it was the longest one I've done- it probably took us 15 or 20 minutes following the line to get near our target depth because of the angle we were approaching it from. At around 140', visibility had become atrocious, and the line was loose, running around on the bottom in loops....at this point, I'd had about enough fun, and was ready to thumb the dive. This is where I made my first obvious mistake. I misread a signal from one of my team mates, and thought he was signalling to turn the dive- I returned the signal, and began to head back slowly along the line. After just a minute or two, I realized that I had lost the line, and looking around, realized that I had lost my team as well. I spent a few minutes scootering in slow circles, trying to relocate the line and/or spot my buddy's lights, but it was hopeless- vis was about 12 inches. I shrugged, and started to scooter back along my compass heading. This turned out to be my second mistake. My heading wasn't very accurate, so I spent the next 10 minutes or so at 140', wondering why I wasn't getting any shallower. At this point, my deco was starting to rack up, and I was cold, tired, and alone. I stopped and thought about it, and realized that I must be contouring the lake bottom at a constant depth, so I adjusted to a heading that should have taken me directly to shore. Another 10 minutes of trigger time, and I was STILL at 140'. A glance at my computer showed 37 minutes of deco, which was about 36 more minutes than I really wanted to do at that point, so I elected to punch out. It was a cold, rainy day, and I knew there were virtually no boats on the lake, so I stowed my scooter, pulled out my SMB and my reel, and shot it off to the surface, and spent a long, cold, dark 40 minutes climbing the line.

When I surfaced, I was amazed to see that I was approximately equidistant from either shore, damn near in the middle of the lake, and at least a half mile from my target! I could juuuuust barely make out my team mates on shore. I was immensely relieved to see them there, and to be back at zero feet. It was a loooong run in on the surface.
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Re: When good dives go BAD! Lessons Learned?

Post by lizard0924 »

dwashbur wrote: The other thing I learned: a good, compassionate instructor is worth triple his weight in gold!
Absolutely true. I would never be diving if it weren't for my OW instructor back in Wisconsin (Jim Wittlief). There were several times I was reduced to tears during my class (both topside and during dives) due to a host of irrational fears I had. One particularly memorable incident involved me crying hysterically while DRIVING to the dive site. Heck, I wasn't even in the water when THAT happened, just THINKING about getting in the water set me off.....talk about irrational fears.

If it weren't for Jim's compassionate approach, I would have surely given up before getting certified. Luckily, he talked me through my dive-related issues, and I've gone on to fall in love with scuba. So, thanks to Jim and all the instructors out there who recognize how scary learning scuba can be to a newbie!
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Re: When good dives go BAD! Lessons Learned?

Post by dwashbur »

Joshua Smith wrote:My heading wasn't very accurate, so I spent the next 10 minutes or so at 140', wondering why I wasn't getting any shallower. At this point, my deco was starting to rack up, and I was cold, tired, and alone. I stopped and thought about it, and realized that I must be contouring the lake bottom at a constant depth, so I adjusted to a heading that should have taken me directly to shore. Another 10 minutes of trigger time, and I was STILL at 140'.
After getting turned around like this a couple of times, though not at such godawful depths (you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din) I started making sure I know what heading is "home" or "shore" or whatever before I descend. Even at a place as familiar as Cove 2 where you can basically just head uphill, I'll check my compass and then annoy my buddies by pointing out "if you get turned around, 240 will take you to shore." I sure don't envy you that 40 minutes of hang time! Glad you came out okay.
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Re: When good dives go BAD! Lessons Learned?

Post by Joshua Smith »

dwashbur wrote:
Joshua Smith wrote:My heading wasn't very accurate, so I spent the next 10 minutes or so at 140', wondering why I wasn't getting any shallower. At this point, my deco was starting to rack up, and I was cold, tired, and alone. I stopped and thought about it, and realized that I must be contouring the lake bottom at a constant depth, so I adjusted to a heading that should have taken me directly to shore. Another 10 minutes of trigger time, and I was STILL at 140'.
After getting turned around like this a couple of times, though not at such godawful depths (you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din) I started making sure I know what heading is "home" or "shore" or whatever before I descend. Even at a place as familiar as Cove 2 where you can basically just head uphill, I'll check my compass and then annoy my buddies by pointing out "if you get turned around, 240 will take you to shore." I sure don't envy you that 40 minutes of hang time! Glad you came out okay.
My point, exactly. I've "known" this for years, but somehow "unlearned" in when my compass was all of a sudden mounted to my scooter.
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Re: When good dives go BAD! Lessons Learned?

Post by spatman »

some of your may remember this trip report i wrote over a year ago.

that incident was the single most eye-opening learning experience i've had to date. i learned a lot about myself as well as diving as i processed the events of that day in the months afterwards.

but the most important points i took from that day are:

• always dive within you and your buddy's skill and comfort zone
• get on the same page with your buddy when it comes to low or out of air situations, and practice those
• you don't know what you don't know. keep learning.
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