Are you on good terms with Lady Luck?

[SeaHorse81]

I agree with everything you've said, Jax. I think we have the same beliefs -- just expressing them perhaps, from somewhat different angles. To me, planning means having lots of contingency-strategies running in the background as you map out the basics of the dive. In my mind, it's all part of the same process.

One of the main reasons I read SB is to remain consciously aware of the various surprises that can occur, and learn from the discussions here what strategies are good to keep in mind. I guess there's nothing we can do for the divers who don't make that effort at maintaining consciousness and respect for what can happen, but I really appreciate how you all contribute to my efforts to do so.

Thanks, and keep the good discussions coming!

 

[Kevrumbo]

I've been ruminating over some of the accident and incident accounts which have recently been posted, and something kind of gelled for me.

Every dive has requirements. You need a certain amount of gas, have a certain limit with respect to decompression (whatever it is), perhaps need to be able to swim against current or get back on a boat in big swells. Each of these parameters sets a part of the limit that describes the dive.

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.

"Luck is the residue of design."
--Branch Rickey.
(Poor design -->poor luck)

"Chance favors the prepared mind. . ."
--Louis Pasteur

"Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live. . ."
--Robert Kennedy

 

[TSandM]

Jax, I would say the ability to cope with the unexpected is one of the resources you bring to a dive. If you are short on that resource, then any dive that takes place in a dynamic environment (like open ocean) may be counting on luck.

There are a lot of things that comprise "resources". Gas is an obvious one; composure is another. Strength may be a resource on some dives. Navigation ability may be important. All I'm saying is that if you plan a dive where you have a marginal supply of ANYTHING that is required to make that dive happen safely, you are inviting luck to play what I think is an excessive role in your plan.

 

[down4fun]

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.

Sometimes after a dive I think of what could have gone wrong and how I would have handled the situation. IMHO it helps to visualize different scenarios and and have thought about them before they happen.

The other thing is sometimes it's okay to be just a little uncomfortable. I think it helps us grow. I lost a fin on the deck of a boat making a hot drop to a wreck at 165ft. My plan for the dive was 30 min bottom time and a bailout drill thru deco at the end. When I got to the wreck with my one fin i contemplated what to do. I decided conditions were so that i could finish the dive. When the end of our bottom time came I still elected to do the bailout drill. My reasoning was the the one fin ascent would provide a little added stress just like a real bailout situation. It was a challenge maneuvering my mass with one fin and dodging the jellyfish invasion we had at the time, but in the end i think it strengthened me as a diver.

As said by others planning and training reduce the need for luck. I just returned from 3 days of diving the USS Oriskany. On one dive we made a penetration of about 200 feet into the crews quarters at a depth of 185 feet. It would have been a really crappy place to have a failure, but in thinking about it after I could not think of a failure that I or we the team couldn't handle in that situation. We had a guideline, we had redundant lights, gas and each other and the training and skills to deal with the possible failures. I'm not invincible I know that, but it helps to stack the deck in your favor.

 

[Bubbletrubble]

Ironically, I think that the most common personality drawn to the sport of scuba diving is the gambler/risk-taker.

 

[mathauck0814]

Interesting. My experience myself and with other divers is that when a dive goes well it's on account of one's ability to plan and their overall "prowess". When something goes wrong is the only time I've heard "luck" be brought up. At that stage it's exclusively the bad kind.

 

[boulderjohn]

I am pretty sure I know one of the threads that got Lynne pondering. I know it got me pondering. It is gone now because of how badly it went to pieces, so I can't link to it.

What stunned me on that thread was the presentation of an attitude on the part of several posters that had the exact opposite point of view of the consensus of this thread. Doing dives that most people who have posted here would consider foolishly risky was a matter of routine with them. But that was not what stunned me. What stunned me was the attitude--expressed with such belligerence that the thread was ruined--that the opinions expressed in this thread so far are stupid and childish. Real divers do these dives, and the rest of you are %@$%@*.

Well, now that I have left my childlike innocence behind and realize that this attitude exists, I am still a little dazed. Those of you who think that this thread is just repeating the obvious don't realize that there is a diving faction out there that believes just the opposite, and they will get right in your face to let you know it.

 

[Kevrumbo]

Ironically, I think that the most common personality drawn to the sport of scuba diving is the gambler/risk-taker.

Interesting. My experience myself and with other divers is that when a dive goes well it's on account of one's ability to plan and their overall "prowess". When something goes wrong is the only time I've heard "luck" be brought up. At that stage it's exclusively the bad kind.

I am pretty sure I know one of the threads that got Lynne pondering. I know it got me pondering. It is gone now because of how badly it went to pieces, so I can't link to it.

What stunned me on that thread was the presentation of an attitude on the part of several posters that had the exact opposite point of view of the consensus of this thread. Doing dives that most people who have posted here would consider foolishly risky was a matter of routine with them. But that was not what stunned me. What stunned me was the attitude--expressed with such belligerence that the thread was ruined--that the opinions expressed in this thread so far are stupid and childish. Real divers do these dives, and the rest of you are %@$%@*.

Well, now that I have left my childlike innocence behind and realize that this attitude exists, I am still a little dazed. Those of you who think that this thread is just repeating the obvious don't realize that there is a diving faction out there that believes just the opposite, and they will get right in your face to let you know it.

"Luck is the residue of design."
--Branch Rickey.
(Good design -->good luck)

"Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live. . ."
--Robert Kennedy

 

[wtcreaux]

Diving is done in a 3D world. May I be so bold as to compare to another 3D world - flying. Having spent the 90s in the air medical world, we lost an average of 26 crew members a year (nationally in the US)

We had very specific operating guidelines - green, yellow, red. Green was an automatic go, yellow required pilot approval, and red was an automatic no-go (no matter the situation, including fellow critically-injured Emergency Services).

One company I flew with routinely pulled hard pitch on take-off, another company always took it easy (their rationale - if you "rip the guts out routinely, it won't be there when I need to rip 'em out"). Never had problems one way or the other - just differences in philosophy (though I appreciated the conservativeness of the latter).

We ALWAYS had fuel reserve as did not know when weather would pop (especially long-distance flights)

For the most part, every part of our flight was carefully planned out and executed. ANY person on the team could abort the mission for ANY reason.........

2 thoughts - 1) people say the sky's the limit, in my world the ground was, and 2) there are old pilots and bold pilots but very few old bold pilots.

 

[boulderjohn]

Ironically, I think that the most common personality drawn to the sport of scuba diving is the gambler/risk-taker.

In a recent thread, a poster with inside knowledge of the insurance industry said that life insurance limitations related to scuba diving are not related to the danger of scuba diving itself. It is based on research that indicates that scuba divers are likely to engage in other high risk behaviors.

Most of the people with whom I have dived locally over the past few years are avid rock climbers--some doing seriously advanced routes. One is into formation sky diving. I don't do anything like that myself. The most dangerous thing I have ever done regularly is commute on Route 93 between Golden and Boulder, which is somewhere between alligator wrestling and sword swallowing on the danger scale.