Are you on good terms with Lady Luck?

[DivemasterDennis]

I really like the emphasis in this thread on dive planning. Thank you! As to luck in diving, luck is when a 120 day dive trip has perfect weather every day. Luck is when someone drops a piece of equipment off the boat and another diver descends right on it. Luck is coming upon new and unique animals or animal behavior. Luck is leaving an unsecured valuable item in the dive center and having it be there when you return. Good dive planning and safe diving NEVER depends on luck. Properly operating equipment is not luck- it is a matter of proper care and maintenance, and pre-dive inspection and testing. Diving in good conditions is not luck, it is collecting information about conditions and selecting a safe and proper dive site and time to dive it. Coming back from a dive with a safe cushion of air, comfortable for having made a safe ascent and safety stop, with a smile on your face, is not luck. Being on a dive boat where everyone is a competent diver and no one is a jerk- that is luck!
DivemasterDennis scubasnobs.com

 

[TSandM]

Being on a dive boat where everyone is a competent diver and no one is a jerk- that is luck!

I had to laugh at this! We just got home from a ten day GUE special event in the Red Sea (which kind of guarantees the "competent diver" part). One of my boatmates was musing in the airport on the way home that he was amazed that, after ten days, there was nobody on the boat he wanted to smother with their own pillow

I think you can meticulously plan a dive, but if the margin of safety you build in is sufficiently thin, you are inviting luck to the party. (This is specifically in reference to deep bounce dives.) Obviously, folks who don't plan at all are using Luck as a DM -- but people who plan dives where everything will be fine so long as nothing at all goes wrong may not be aware that they have an invisible, and capricious, dive buddy.

 

[AfterDark]

After forty years of diving and more then a couple close calls, to say nothing of things that have happened to me out of the water, I'm inclined to yes, we may even have a romance!

 

[SeaHorse81]

When the resources you bring to bear are far in excess of what the dive requires, luck plays almost no role in how the dive comes out. If I do a 30 foot reef dive in calm, sunlit water, with double 80's on my back, a RIB to come pick me up if I get lost, and a very solid, experienced dive buddy, luck is going to have a hard time playing havoc with that dive.

On the other hand, if you do a bounce dive to 300 feet on a single Al80, you are seriously counting on everything going exactly according to plan . . . and in this case, if Lady Luck has a frown on her face, the outcome is not going to be pretty.

The closer you dive to the limits of your resources, whether it's gas, strength, experience, decompression, surface support or whatever, the larger a role you are allowing Lady Luck to play in how the dive comes out. Since she is known to be a fickle mistress, it may not be a great idea to invite her along for the dive.

Elegantly summarized. Somebody should make a plaque out of this and hang it in every dive shop.

 

[RonFrank]

Geez you are not talking about a 300' dive that went to 400' and they ran out of air and all ended up in the hospital pray tell?

 

[Jax]

Interesting thought - that you can plan "Lady Luck" . . . or Fate, or Fortune, or whatever . . . out of a dive.

One can certainly put the odds on one's side, but there will be some element of Fortune, both good and bad.

The overwhelming majority of incidents seem to have diver error as the primary factor, but there are those where the diver has a massive coronary at depth, or an Immersion Pulmonary Edema, or just flat gets lost and disappears.

Even though we plan for both good Fortune and Misfortune, let us never be so complacent as to think that s*** doesn't happen.

 

[SeaHorse81]

I don't think anyone's implying that you can make diving 100% safe. We all know you can't, but you can sure push the odds more in your favor. Complacency kills, and I don't think Lynne is suggesting that proper planning allows for comfortable complacency. Nothing allows for that.

I think the points about risk reduction, however, are well made. Yes, s*** happens, but you can make it have to work a lot harder to get to you.

 

[Jax]

Not saying that people think they can make diving 100% safe.

There are some divers I've run into that cannot seem to deal with something they haven't thought of. I think I'm saying this badly, but let me try some examples. I'm looking at the *mental* aspect, that s*** happens. Remember the saying, the only emergency underwater is no air; if you are breathing, then nothing is an emergency.

Amy is diving along wonderfully, everything is fine, then her fin strap breaks and she loses a fin. She panics and punches the inflator . . .

Bob is having a lovely dive, when a sea lion nips his BC. Whoosh goes the air. He flails magnificently, but doesn't drop his weights . . .

Charlene is on a lobster hunting dive, when she is suddenly caught . . . she spins and twists, but can't find the problem . . . then her reg gets caught and jerked out of her mouth . . .

Dave has a splendid entry and everything is going just fine, but it seems to be getting harder to breathe. He doesn't understand, but it's harder and harder . . . in a panic, he heads for the surface . . .

The difference between the above divers and those that read these forums is that your average recreational diver does not think about misfortune and what to do about it. The other side of planning your dive is also thinking about what to do when the SHTF. It's considering misfortune and how to deal with it. It is knowing where your personal line is drawn in the sand, and being prepared to thumb if the situation pushes you over the line.

 

[captain]

With 53 years of diving and no incidents am I lucky or did I make my own luck, probably some of both.

 

[eponym]

Interesting thought - that you can plan "Lady Luck" . . . or Fate, or Fortune, or whatever . . . out of a dive.
One can certainly put the odds on one's side, but there will be some element of Fortune, both good and bad.

Words to live by.

I try to keep this line from Marianne Moore's poem A Grave in mind when planning dives:

"The sea is a collector, quick to return a rapacious look."​