Do You Know When To Call (Thumb) a Dive?

[cloudflint]

As my instructor always told me "nice guys will get you killed, its the bastards who will keep you alive". A nice guy will carry on a dive even if he thinks he should abort because he dosent want to ruin the dive. A bastard will totally disregard all the planning and effort you had to do to go on the dive and drag you out at the first hint of danger. I have noticed that alot of the nice divers i used to know as a kid are no longer around whereas all the bastards who annoyed everyone are still out diving.

Ive thumbed quite a few dives for various reasons. Not being comfortable continuing in bad conditions, being unsure if i can ensure the continued safety of the group im leading, being concerned that a member of the group may not be 100% or even just if i get a bad feeling. Ive taken some stick for some of these but I dont really care cos the people i was diving with or leading came out alive and safe so as far as im concerned the dives where a success.

 

[koozemani]

In my limited experience, Ive only had my buddy(gf) thumb a dive once. In hind sight I'm glad she did. She had a better sence of the current and was not comfortable with it. No questions asked, we started up. When we surfaced, we realized that we'd been pulled about 200 yards out and had a long swim into the current to get back to the boat.

The only time I considered Thumbing a dive was during a cert dive. I didn't like the conditions, wasn't comfortable in the rented gear I was using, and generally not happy. I didnt thumb the dive because I wanted to get the cert over with. In hind sight, I should have thumbed it. After thinking over the events, I learned that I need to trust my first instinct and realize that there will always be other dives. Whereas, there might not be if I ignore my instincts and press on.

+1 on no questions, no guilt, no disappointed looks, no grief topside, just start up and nicely figure out what the issue was.

 

[Scott]

I always enjoy this topic during OW classes, especially when couples are taking it together and one is less enthusiastic than the other about the course.
I will end the discussion by letting them know if you have any issues come back and I will help them understand all while simulating slapping them upside the head and shaking the daylights out of them.
Apparently one couple took me seriously about the slapping part. The husband 'pushed' the spouse into doing a dive the she was not comfortable with while on vacation. Upon their return they stopped by and she said "here he is, slap the s**t out him for making me do a dive I was not ready for”.
No violence, just a friendly chat.

 

[knowone]

Through a feeling of responsibility for, or the least dumb one of the group


Or when I wear my summer wetsuit, well before, my body is ready
with the jacket half zippered, on the way to 40M and can't breathe
through constriction realise it will only get worse and that I am the

dumbest one


Mind you, I hung around at 10M for a bit then surfaced into the
empty boat, and the rest continued the dive

 

[Starcruiser]

Everyone of the folk I dive with has the same philosophy, if it ain't fun, don't do it. I had a friend meet me in NC once during a vacation. NC weather being what it is, the shop called the first two dives due to rough conditions. On the third day, we went out on the boat. I did the first dive and can't recall ever being pummeled like that. Came back after that dive, didn't feel very well and found another group that my buddy could dive with for the second dive, and relaxed. Sure, I missed the dive, and got told the conditions were much better, but I just didn't feel like chancing it. My buddy completely understood, and had a great dive with two insta buddies.

 

[James R]

I'm not at all afraid or worried about what someone else may think about me if I thumb a dive, and if they are upset at me for it that's not my problem either - they can go find another buddy. One of my buddies thumbed a dive 2-3 min in after we drove 7hrs one way to get there. Oh well we made our way to the mooring line and I guess just getting there and calming down helped him relax and we continued. Had we gone ahead and ended the dive, big deal! Better to lose one dive than a friend. You may not know why your buddy thumbs a dive, and we should all remember that it could be anything from feeling uncomfortable to a medical issue like chest pains.

 

[oreocookie]

Sometimes it isn't that easy to decide what is the right thing to do. ... dont do it if you dont want to. In the end I made the dive and it was the right thing to do. .. And I came out feeling like i had really accomplished something.

I completely agree with this. Sometimes you have to push yourself even if you don't want to. During my Rescue class in June, some combination of stress, nerves and excitement plus making a dive in 40-something F water in a rental wetsuit with a seriously ill-fitting integrated hood had me crumbling during the lunch break and I did not want to get back in the water, even for surface skills. Despite the instructors telling me I could come back to finish it another weekend, I felt that I had to do it then and there, otherwise I probably wouldn't finish the class at all. I reluctantly geared up and finished the skills we had to do that day with a sense of accomplishment.

On the other hand, I did have to thumb a dive for the second time a couple of weeks ago on vacation in Utila. There were 3 of us attempting to make a night shore dive. This would have been my second ever shore dive, but we'd done the site earlier in the week and I'd done night dives before. We checked out the conditions and decided it was doable. Conditions were changing as we were gearing up, though. One of my buddies dropped a fin while trying to don them in the surf, we managed to find it and continue, but the stress was starting to mount. We tried to swim out in 4 feet of water, but every time I was near the bottom, the surge brought me right back up. It didn't seem like we were going anywhere either. Regrouping at the surface (standing up) I realized that we were getting pulled away from our entry point much more than we anticipated. Just getting back to shore, the waves that were initially fun to bob in were more frequent and seemed to be having fun knocking me over. My buddies were a bit disappointed at first, but I think they realized it was the right call because conditions only would have gotten worse for the exit had we managed to make the dive.

 

[Frosty]

I guess the flip side to this whole play it safe conversation is. How are you gonna learn to handle difficult situations if you don't deal with difficult situations. I think you guys use the phrase "task loading"

 

[squid509]

I have tuned a dive early due low reaming air

During a shore dive next to a fishing pier me and my buddy planed to work on navigation skill while our instructor and an OW trainee did check outs by

a. set the dive flag for our group
b. finding a small rowboat size wreck
c. finding a larger rowboat wreck rumored to have a octopus living in it
d. retrieve 2 crab pots lost by the men fishing on the pier

We briefed to turn the dive at 1200# end the dive with a 500# reserve and concentrate on navigating to the wrecks

After we set the dive flag we set bearings to the end of the pier and found one of the crab pots, raised it, retuned it the fishermen then descend again to navigate to the wreak. After finding the small wreck and exploring it a bit me and my buddy had 1400# left so I gave the turnaround signal. We still had some time left to explore but the fuzzy math I did in my head told me that we would be pushing our air if we made it to the second wreck. When we got back to shore me and my buddy both had 1100# left we debriefed that we could have made it to the second wreck but it was not worth the risk of returning with empty steal tanks

For those of you who like to overanalyze stuff I have links
divelogs - Dive 5 by squid509 my log entery and profile
http://www.pnwscuba.com/sitemaps/harpersferry.GIF dive sight map

P/S: So I don’t get flamed I need to clarify that me and my buddy are certified and in rescue quails and our instructor invited us to come with and do our own thing while he was teaching an open water class since we helped lug tanks and lead for his class
free tank rentle for loading his truck with everyone's gear

 

[Culcuhain]

My wife thumbed a dive once since started having problems clearing her ears. That was fine with me. We swam in. Some of my other buddies were on shore and I asked them, "Anyone want to do a 1/2 tank dive?" The wife gave them the 1/2 full tank and we went out again for a little while.