Runaway buddy

[Tigerman]

Following the discussions lately about CESA and buddys dragging you by the hose, I came to think about a minor yet relevant incident I was involved in earlier this year.

we were doing a ~100 feet wreck dive in fairly cold water (55-60 F).
After about 25 minutes were getting ready to ascend along the line thats attached to the wreck and a bouy. Me and my buddy start ascending and after a few meters she begins to pick up the pace, starting to go very fast. I try to keep up for a couple of meters, but going at twice the preferred ascent rate and watching her pull further away from me, I decide that its better for me to slow down as Ill only risk getting hurt myself if I keep going after her.
I keep going up to my safety stop and while staying there, I see my buddy a meter or two above me, so I go around the two guys hanging on the line between us to meet up with her again.
I now see that shes holding on hard to the line, her BCD is fully inflated and blowing excessive air through the dump valve. We both still have fairly much air left, although shes using air very fast. Given the less than perfect ascent so far, we decide to pull a longer than normal safety stop before ascending.
When we surface, I find out that her inflator is stuck in open position, so that it keep filling her BCD.

Luckilly my buddy didnt have any signs of bends or anything after this minor incident, but it taught us a couple of things.
The first thing that I found out is that I will infact let a "runaway buddy" go to the surface alone. Wether thats good or bad might be a topic for discussion, but my reasoning was that "its better with one accident than two".
The second thing that Im not likely to forget anytime soon is that if your inflator is stuck open, all you need to do is unplug the hose and you wont fill more air into the BCD.
Also, this served as a great demonstration of how good it can be to have that line to hold on to. If she hadnt gotten hold of the line, she wouldnt have been able to perform a safety stop and would run the risk of waiting for me in the surface, alone and bent. That said, ive seen people go feet first from similar dives before without being bent (4-5 different people), but I think the ascent rate in this case was higher than the ones going feet first..

 

[tonka97]

Great post.

Demonstrates the necessity of treating our gear like the life support system it is.

Practicing configuring and de-configuring your equipment with eyes closed or in the dark makes a lot of sense.

How many of us would automatically recognize the problem and simply locate and disconnect the inflator hose?

Should be practiced a couple of hundred times.

 

[Diver Dennis]

Isn't that hose difficult to disconnect under pressure?

 

[Tigerman]

Isn't that hose difficult to disconnect under pressure?

I have both connected and disconnected it under pressure.. Not really that hard.. But identifying the problem and doing it might be, especially as if your inflator is stuck open, youll start going up pretty rapidly..

 

[scubak]

I had my inflator hose stick a couple of times this summer...found out it was a Halcyon issue and had it replaced PDQ!!!
Not hard to disconnect even with blue smurf gloves...
Glad everything turned out ok.
K

 

[Diver0001]

Following the discussions lately about CESA and buddys dragging you by the hose, I came to think about a minor yet relevant incident I was involved in earlier this year.

we were doing a ~100 feet wreck dive in fairly cold water (55-60 F).
After about 25 minutes were getting ready to ascend along the line thats attached to the wreck and a bouy. Me and my buddy start ascending and after a few meters she begins to pick up the pace, starting to go very fast. I try to keep up for a couple of meters, but going at twice the preferred ascent rate and watching her pull further away from me, I decide that its better for me to slow down as Ill only risk getting hurt myself if I keep going after her.
I keep going up to my safety stop and while staying there, I see my buddy a meter or two above me, so I go around the two guys hanging on the line between us to meet up with her again.
I now see that shes holding on hard to the line, her BCD is fully inflated and blowing excessive air through the dump valve. We both still have fairly much air left, although shes using air very fast. Given the less than perfect ascent so far, we decide to pull a longer than normal safety stop before ascending.
When we surface, I find out that her inflator is stuck in open position, so that it keep filling her BCD.

Luckilly my buddy didnt have any signs of bends or anything after this minor incident, but it taught us a couple of things.
The first thing that I found out is that I will infact let a "runaway buddy" go to the surface alone. Wether thats good or bad might be a topic for discussion, but my reasoning was that "its better with one accident than two".
The second thing that Im not likely to forget anytime soon is that if your inflator is stuck open, all you need to do is unplug the hose and you wont fill more air into the BCD.
Also, this served as a great demonstration of how good it can be to have that line to hold on to. If she hadnt gotten hold of the line, she wouldnt have been able to perform a safety stop and would run the risk of waiting for me in the surface, alone and bent. That said, ive seen people go feet first from similar dives before without being bent (4-5 different people), but I think the ascent rate in this case was higher than the ones going feet first..

Great post.

A couple of points I would like to make;

1) Inflators are more likely to free-flow than regulators. Many divers seem to be concerned about regulator free-flows but in my experience regulator free-flows are uncomon and inflator free-flows are *very* common.

2) The "revalation" that "unplugging" the free-flow is the way to stop a free-flowing inflator is / should be taught in the OW course. The fact that you didn't learn it during OW gives me some alarm bells. Unfortunately, some OW instructors don't teach everything they need to teach during OW.

3) your observation that the fact that she could grab the line saved her from making an uncontrolled ascent is...alas... incorrect. A BCD can *not* fill faster than it can dump (in fact, the reality is quite the opposite). You should have been shown this in your OW course too but you were not.... I'm sorry for that. To convince yourself of this, go in shallow water (on the bottom for my part) and press both the "inflate" and "vent" buttons of your BCD at the same time. You won't move. In other words, an uncontrolled ascent due to a free-flowing inflator is unthinkable if the diver has been trained correctly. The same, by the way, goes for the dry-suit diver, and not just for the diver with a free-flowing BCD.

However, it's not all bad news. Your intuition that you shouldn't chase after her and make yourself a 2nd victim was basically good. Your idea that you should extend the safety stop was also good. Both signs that you understood your training. Certainly once you had caught up with your buddy and the situation was under control then pausing was the correct course of action.

On the other hand, consider this.... Suppose your buddy was seriously injured and alone on the surface without your help.... Suppose futher that your buddy died from her injuries.... and that you were just a few feet away doing an "optional" safety stop instead of assisting her..... How would you weigh an "optional" safety stop against a human life? Assuming your buddy had gone all the way to the surface, what would you have done with this in mind...?

R..

 

[Meister481]

I've had a similar situation happen to me, but my buddy bolted when his regs flowed. 100' down on a wreck. I wasn't rescue certified so I wasn't prepared. He was the root of the problem, just like your situation. He ignored his training, just like your buddy. I got to the surface and back on the boat to see that he was in good shape. He waved to me on the way up, so he was kinda in control. I didn't do a stop but was sticking with a decent ascent rate. Scarey situation. You were correct to not follow her uncontrolled ascent, but it's a tough decision!

 

[Tigerman]

Great post.

A couple of points I would like to make;

1) Inflators are more likely to free-flow than regulators. Many divers seem to be concerned about regulator free-flows but in my experience regulator free-flows are uncomon and inflator free-flows are *very* common.

2) The "revalation" that "unplugging" the free-flow is the way to stop a free-flowing inflator is / should be taught in the OW course. The fact that you didn't learn it during OW gives me some alarm bells. Unfortunately, some OW instructors don't teach everything they need to teach during OW.

3) your observation that the fact that she could grab the line saved her from making an uncontrolled ascent is...alas... incorrect. A BCD can *not* fill faster than it can dump (in fact, the reality is quite the opposite). You should have been shown this in your OW course too but you were not.... I'm sorry for that. To convince yourself of this, go in shallow water (on the bottom for my part) and press both the "inflate" and "vent" buttons of your BCD at the same time. You won't move. In other words, an uncontrolled ascent due to a free-flowing inflator is unthinkable if the diver has been trained correctly. The same, by the way, goes for the dry-suit diver, and not just for the diver with a free-flowing BCD.

However, it's not all bad news. Your intuition that you shouldn't chase after her and make yourself a 2nd victim was basically good. Your idea that you should extend the safety stop was also good. Both signs that you understood your training. Certainly once you had caught up with your buddy and the situation was under control then pausing was the correct course of action.

On the other hand, consider this.... Suppose your buddy was seriously injured and alone on the surface without your help.... Suppose futher that your buddy died from her injuries.... and that you were just a few feet away doing an "optional" safety stop instead of assisting her..... How would you weigh an "optional" safety stop against a human life? Assuming your buddy had gone all the way to the surface, what would you have done with this in mind...?

R..

We were infact told about disconnecting hoses in the coruse, it just didnt stick untill after this experience.

Considering the fact that neither her, nor me (who already was lagging behind at twice the recommended ascent rate) thought about the vent button on the inflator, the line DID infact save her from going straight to the bottomn. Also, I dont think she even realized what was going on untill she was at the surface and told me that she couldnt release air from the bcd properly..

If she bolted to the surface and died from it, its not unlikely that I would die from it as well or atleast be so badly bent i wouldnt be of very much help to her anyways, alas I would have survived with my health instead of joining her as a corpse..
Also the safety stop on deep dives are according to training NOT optional and should ALWAYS be performed on deep dives. Personally I try to perform the safety stop on every single dive..
Furthermore, there was 6 or 8 more divers in the water, atleast 2 of them already on the surface when we started ascending. Even if there wheren more divers in the water, Id still preferr one accident over two accidents tho..

 

[dk2943]

Wow! This is one of the great reasons for this list. I am a new diver with just a few dives. This issue was NEVER covered in my training. Before I read this thread, I would have been completely clueless about what to do in this situation. I feel I have learned a valuable lesson.

 

[TSandM]

It wasn't covered in mine, either. Keep reading -- You'll be AMAZED at the number of things you'll learn that weren't covered in your OW.

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