StuartT
Contributor
So yesterday I was diving at Kelvin Grove with a regular buddy. About 70 minutes into our second dive I went under a rope anchor line in the bay at about 15 feet. My buddy was a little ahead of me when I realized the rope had snagged somewhere on my first stage. We had agreed before the dive if we were to get separated to just continue solo as we were both comfortable with that. And also to limit our run time to 70 minutes or so. I had about 1300 psi left in my steel 100 plus a full 30 cube back mounted pony when the entanglement happened. Initially I had a few second panic then thought about the situation and decided I was ok as I wasn't that deep and had no deco obligation. So I decided to ditch my gear and do an emergency ascent. I first dumped any air that was in my suit to avoid rocketing to the surface. I also realized the buoyancy of my suit would get me to the surface once I ditched my gear. So I detached my drysuit hose and started to remove my backplate/wing rig. I didn't have a weight belt on as my 16 lbs was in tank strap pouches(so no weight belt to ditch). So when I removed my gear I took a big breath, let go of everything and ascended to the surface at a reasonable rate( I think) exhaling all the way up. I probably could have tried to untangle the rope from my first stage once I had my gear off and in front of me but made the decision to just get to the surface as I was solo at this point. Doing skills like this regularly really helped calm me down and assess the situation at hand without panicking. When my buddy surfaced a minute or so after me she initially thought how the hell did you get to shore so quick and get your gear off as I was standing in about 2 ft of water with just my suit ,mask and fins. when I told her what happened she offered to retrieve my gear which was very kind of her. Our club does regular pool dives where we practice thing like gear removal, mask drills, smb deployment, air sharing etc. plus I often will switch regs,do mask drills, etc during ocean dives. All ended well thanks to keeping sharp on drills. And thanks Kerry my getting my gear back.