Do you practice safety procedures regularly?

[Tigerman]

I usually end up with one of my insta-buddies having some issue or other on every dive trip I take, so I get the practice in real situations
Come to think of it, in that regard my last trip was pretty uneventful..

Seriously though I do practice some drills every now and then, but probably not as much as I should.

 

[knowone]

Some times a dive is just like that.

You dive in negative and totally flood your mask instead of only partially, keep going and clear, head's too hot, the mask fogs, your left eye stings, equalise
let water in clear again not much viz, lose sight of the line, going down increasing speed start punching air in your bc to slow yourself down clearing ears adjusting
mask getting pushed off the wreck you can't see yet, check compass, crap, Im
not facing this way, yes you are you've been spun around somehow.

Not slack tide yet, current not bad, depth gauge says bottom coming soon vice like pressure on inflator button, as the hissing of the bc air tries to keep up with the speed of your descent, bottom blurr approaching, where's the wreck check compass, into horizontal to apply brakes, try to fin it's going to be a chore, decide to come in for a smooth landing, perfect, foot or two off bottom try and fin getting no where, pull along bottom can't judge viz becoming easier to fin is the tide dying down, hey I'm in the lee of the ship shadow appears, found it 15 foot viz want to find the bow and follow it up on my back can't do that I'll be blown off, find the bow and I'll see, keep going, I get there and it's slack

So there it is, five metres away and I'm half way between on my back and not, gliding up the sharp front bit of the bow, how lovely, bliss, then its inside how much ground can I cover do I want to cover, there's always next time, squeezing into every conceivable crevice and then it's outside to see if i can see a ship but all I can see is encrusted unnatural angles running off in all directions into oblivion

Then you feel it starting up again, slowly like a turbine, and you are hand over hand to try to find an up line because you don't know where it is because you didn't follow it down, and there they all are, most of your buddies, the most horizontal recreational divers youre ever likely to see, made me proud, as the turbine approaches full speed, with some using camera lanyards to hold them on, then hi ho its up we go, and the boats a buckin and the ladder tries to do a shintaro on your head and the fat guy with the purple face gets blown off the trail line and then someone falls off the ladder, and the hull tries to dent itself on my shoulder, then all is well.

So there we all are, with not too much blood with our wetsuits holding our tired battered bodies together as this is the second boat dive of the morning and it's
vroomvroomeeeeeeeeeeeeback to shore

And then to the pub to start practising

 

[DandyDon]

I like to drill on weight ditching at the first of the first dive on any outing or trip, and bubble checks on every dive. More would be better.

 

[highdesert]

Nope ... not saying that's a good thing ... but then we don't dive regularly ... which actually would make practice more important, I guess. On the agenda for the next trip is practicing shooting the new biggie SMB's.

 

[ScubaKeith001]

Me and the wife always practice safety stops. If my planned dive is around 100ft and on my way back up I may stop at 50ft for three mintues and then again around 30ft for a couple mins and around 15-20ft for my final safety stop. (Air depends on this)

Always a safety stop even if its at 30ft or 120ft. The deeper I go the more stop I do coming back up though. I judge my air

 

[Jaydubya]

Before entering the cave, check head to toe.
Face in the water, all regulators do flow.
Cutting devices, lights, and safely lines stowed.
Computer set right and turn pressure we know.
Good with the dive plan and we're ready to go.
We look for small bubbles and donate our regs,
Primary lights are on, then two follows one.
We come to the entrance, give a final OK.
We enter the tunnel and have a good day.

 

[Phil_C]

I've only returned to diving this recently and have gone through two certification processes this year so have been practicing regularly, but as a result of something that happened I asked my diving partner this question the other day and he couldn't remember the last time he had practiced mask clearing or any other drills. He thought it had been about six or seven years ago!

Having told me that he didn't practise he still could still react appropriately, on a dive two weeks ago the guides o-ring blew on her first stage at 20m - my buddy was straight over - tank valve turned off and octopus supplied. So when the chips were down he still got it right. Reassuring for me as well - Phil

 

[scuba_shark_fart]

I was reading Near Misses and Lessons Learned and now I have a sudden urge of being underwater with my wife to train safety procedures.

Do you practice safety procedures regularly with your usual partner while diving? Maybe on your safety stops, or at the end of a shore dive.

My boyfriend is more often than not my dive buddy and were always drilling one another.
Last week we went to DUI dog days to test and I pulled an out of air drill when he least expected it. He did good though.

 

[MarineResearch]

Absolutely. I always dive with a condom. You never know when you might get lucky.

 

[marco58]

as a newbie with only 25 dives under my BC I still do the practice drills just to remind myself on how to do them so they stay fresh in my mind. Saying that when I got my OW cert. the person who was my dive buddy at the time was a divemaster and had some trouble with the reg. when we did our OOA , share air part of the test. When we got up to the surface he had told me that he had not done that in quite a few dives and had forgotten how to do that. Guess even the best divers should still do the basics once in awhile just to keep up the habits.