Counting strikes: One, two, two, two . . .

[TSandM]

We were at Redondo at low tide, so getting out of the water, climbing the stairs, and getting back to our cars (which were parked up the street) would not have been trivial. I did have the tools with me to swap the hose -- I honestly made the assessment that we were going to stay very shallow, my tank was full, my regs are in good shape, and it wasn't cold enough for a freeflow, so the likelihood of me being out of gas was low enough that I was willing to live with it. I guess doing the little solo dives I do when I set the float for classes, or retrieve it, has relaxed me a little bit about this. Not a DIR approach, for sure! Also, the guy's 2nd stage was accessible and working -- I just would either have had to breathe it upside-down or twist it or me around a bit.

 

[rx7diver]

We each gear up. I am a little ahead of him and the day is sunny and warm, so I yell over that I am going to walk down to the water and cool off.

TSandM,

For this kind of dive (i.e., gear-up in/near parking lot on a sunny day, and walk to shore), I like to arrive with a couple of gallons of fresh water in milk jugs. I put on my dry suit (leaving off my gloves and hood) and pour some water over my head to keep me cool. If this doesn't cool me off enough, I zip my dry suit and pour water over my head and my dry suit, which almost always keeps me sufficiently cool due to the evaporative cooling of my (compressed) neoprene dry suit. I add more water as needed.

So long as I don't become too warm, I can take as long a time as I need, for whatever reason, including assisting another diver, before I don my scuba tank and head for the water.

FWIW.

Safe Diving,

rx7diver

 

[rongoodman]

I would not have continued until the regulator set was straightened out. The short fill and wet legs would just be annoyances. Hopefully, you would have been able to grab some more weight while fixing the hoses.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

I would do things differently. First, i never get dressed. I dress them, check their gear, get them 85% done and then I slip into my gear, in 2-3 minutes. Better to have them hot then for me to overheat waiting 20 minutes for them. If you had done that, the hose issue would have been evident at the car and somebody probably had pliers to fix the hoses.

If the hoses couldn't be fixed, maybe turn the tank backwards and try to make that work.. maybe tell him he doesn't need a BC inflator hose anyway.. right?

I would not have aborted the dive.

 

[PhatD1ver]

Being as I don't have enough dives to say I'd do anything more than 'CALL IT', let me approach this from the perspective of a military helicopter pilot and a similar type situation...

I'm the platoon leader for a platoon of OH-58D super scouts (this is prior to the day they actually ARMED us, so we are just flying recon computers)...

I'm also the training area manager, I keep the record of every hazard in the training area, every wire, every grave vineyard.

I'm sent 10 pilots of varying experience, but only 4 of them are NVG qualified, and I only have one instructor pilot (and SIP), he has never flown the training area. I am under PENTAGON orders to train all of them up to NVG standards in 10 days before deploying to Saudi prior to Desert Storm...

There is no way the SIP can accomplish this, and I am a PIC, with 300 hours of NVG time... do you fly?

Now to make this a little more like your scenario, our CG (commanding general) comes to me and tells me that the SIP will check me out for NVG ops first, if he finds me HIGHLY CAPABLE, he will authorize me to act as a limited time NVG trainer... my first two flights are with the SIP, one for his area orientation, one for my check out... I'm good boys and girls, I am authorized to train... from the LEFT seat... (big deal, trust me)

So, here is one of my new 'students', a long time CW3, good pilot, very cautious, but hates NVG flying... so much, he hasn't logged but the minimum in 5 years, and always flies with a instructor pilot, never at true PIC. Do you fly? (mind you, I'm not in my usual seat, I'm in the LEFT seat, he is in the RIGHT seat where I am used to getting my visual cues)...

To make it better, he clearly has issues getting his equipment set up, he hasn't worn a skull cap in years (reduces the added weight problems for the goggles), and he's very skittish...

We start with traffic patterns over the airfield, hovering and take off, no problems, but his approaches are way steep, and his hover OGE (out of ground effect) is pitiful, more than that, flying NOE just over the airfield and maintaining constant altitude is (consider this peak buoyancy of flying) is bad... do you take him into the training area with trees, wires, fences, and haystacks?

Well, let me tell you what happens with confident and relatively experienced pilots, we do things that probably we shouldn't in the name of God, country, and personal pride...

I took him out, I flew the route start to finish at 40 knots with him on the map following, then we went back and had him fly it, with me on the map... we avoided at least three tree strikes, he quite nearly put our skids into a bush, and I didn't let him do the power line under flight, because it was time to call it.

End of this story is that we should have called the flight, afterward, the SIP and I determined that he would need to fly with each pilot first, and assess which ones I could train...

So, in an effort to make this come together, I've learned over the years to be very cautious, and correct issues on the ground (out of the water) in advance, never take problems with you.. that's asking for trouble...

 

[iztok]

I have mixed response here. If I were your friend with all the issues I would have called the dive myself. On the other hand if I were you I would support his decision and just do extra conservative dive that would basically be nothing more than extended gear check.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Did you ever read my thread/post about the buddy that always has something go wrong or some issue?
I think you found that guy.

Drysuit has a little water in it but zipper is fixed...no biggie, dive anyway.

2200 down to 1800 psi, really? Was it too hard for him to check his tank ahead knowing he was going to do this?
Hoses routed the wrong way? Even if he was diving in the tropics or where ever you'd think that would have been caught at some point...like the first dive! I thought they went through gear set up in open water. Exhaust tee's don't work well inverted.
Weighting... anybody can have issues if they haven't done much cold water diving. But anybody who gives it any thought may realize that it will take more to sink a 7mil than a 3mil. It's up to every diver to bring extra stuff they may need.
You shouldn't have had to change your kit just to patch him up. You should have made him carry around a rock, then he would never forget to bring extra weight again!
Air... no comment.

Or, like Awap said, next time - you're busy.

It's situations like this that drove me to solo dive.

 

[TSandM]

You know, I remember when I finished my OW class. I'm not sure I knew that tanks came in different metals, and I'm sure I wouldn't have been able to tell you how you could look at a tank and know what it was. Therefore, I also didn't know that you had to add weight for aluminum tanks. I DID know that you needed more weight for thicker neoprene, because I seem to remember a table in the OW book with rule of thumb weights for various wetsuits. So I kind of forgive some ignorance there, because if you don't go beyond OW (a lot beyond, because I think the first place I found that kind of info was in the Encyclopedia, which wasn't required or recommended until DM) you just won't know some of these things. And if he thought his tank was a 2440 LP steel, then 2200 psi wouldn't be a big deal.

Anyway, this was one dive, and I'm certainly not going to write him off based on it. Although he is stubbornly attached to that 65 lb wing . . .

 

[Agility]

I have done dives with freshly certified OWD's or with Buddies who had been out of the water for some time and wanted a tune-up dive before their vacation.
We always do our buddy check before hitting the water, so I would have done it on the parking lot where the hose setup could have been corrected right away. I also have (much too much ) lead in my car, that I am too lazy to take out and carry up 4 flights of stairs. Predive communication would have elicited the point that he did not know how much weight he would need in fresh water.
All the same I have done dives like that, with wet undergarment and a buddy who had trouble sinking, but we only went down to a 5m platform for some hovering exercises and mask drills and a little round in shallow water.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Of course he's attached to that 65 lb wing ... he paid a LOT of money for it. Based on your description I daresay it's the Zeagle Tech, which is an $850 rig. It's one of the most popular BCD's on eBay, because an awful lot of people who buy them eventually realize it's not an appropriate choice for how they want to dive ... and so they sell it for a fraction of what they paid for it and buy something else ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)