Anyone experienced an OOA situation?

[Diver Dennis]

I teach donating the primary, donating the alternate and buddy breathing in OW.

I agree with teaching all three too. In both of the OOA incidents I was involved in this year, I donated my octo. in the one where the diver started to panic, I was behind he and his buddy, who was his girl friend and watched it unfold. I got to him before his buddy knew what was really going on and gave him my octo and was purging it as I handed it to him.

 

[nolatom]

Not a true OOA, but once had a buddy in a threesome signal it when I was just about to signal him that I wanted to ascend, when I got to him he showed me he had 400psi (at 75'), I had about 900. I held out my octo (that's my longer hose), he took it, and we did a shared-air ascent, including a safety stop. When we surfaced, I had about 400 and he switched back to his reg. It couldn't've gone better, which I was grateful for since it was my first (and only) real-time experience with it.

I guess he should've signalled "low on air", but the OOA hand across throat really got my attention.

 

[lamont]

I had a similar incident where a DM turned my air off and cranked the valve half a turn so I didn't realize it until about 60 feet on descent. I was diving a single with an H-valve and the left post was open so it wasn't a serious problem, but it could have been in different circumstances, particularly with an inexperienced diver.

I had that happen to me when I only had 20 dives under my belt and no H-valve (and no training on valve drills) pulled an OOA and got onto buddy/DMs long hose and made a safe, but not entirely pretty ascent...

 

[lamont]

I had a buddy run out of air on me once, it was really quite an interesting experience. He did panic but didn't try and rip my reg out. What happened was that in his panic he couldn't find my octo, despite it being bright yellow and pretty close to the middle fo the chest, when I saw he couldn't find it I grabbed it myself and attempted to shove it in his mouth, which remained tightly closed. He bolted to the surface with me holding on, trying to slow him down and still trying to get my octo in his mouth, eventually I had to let him go so he didn't drown. Fortunately everybody turned out fine.

That sounds exactly like the fatality that we had here recently.

 

[tstormdiver]

If it counts, while diving at Mermet Springs a couple of moths ago, I got careless by not checking my air levels frequently enough:shakehead . My buddies haad gotten ahead of me looking at something & when I caught up with them I had less than 200# left. I got their attention & let them know my status. We were at 65' and a safety stop was a good idea. Once we got to the safety stop & warmer water I was able to slow my breathing and conserve some. My buddies had their octos at the ready for me if I needed. I ran out of air just as we broke the surface.:scared: A little spooky, but a lesson well learned. Now I'm almost obsessive about checking my air supplies:doh: .