Skills dives

[dbulmer]

NWG,
The other advantage to pool training is checking out serviced or new gear. Comes in very handy before a dive trip abroad.

 

[RiverRat]

.....but it's amazing how many times somebody doesn't have a dry suit hose hooked up!

Oh yeah I know.......diving in the St. Lawrence, WICKED current, ....I chose to endure and fix it at 90 ffw versus gettin' blown off the wreck messing with it (shipping lanes etc.). It was bearable but I couldn't believe the bruises I had on me when I got back to the hotel Of course having my buddy right next to me during decent would have helped but then again it was a hand over hand decent so almost impossible.

I always had a hard time finding rec divers like me that wanted to practice skills. But I think the basics like mask removals and holding decent stops should be somewhat routine. On the same trip we had an issue where one buddy left his other half on the line struggling to pull herself hand over hand to the anchor line. I stayed with her until she got there and handed her off to her buddy. I found out later she had to hustle to get back to the boat and was getting low on air. She burned much of it struggling to get to the anchor line at the beginning of that dive. Even though these are "recreational" dives they were very advanced and planning and experience are key. Hell we had another group on the boat, didn't listen closely to the briefings and ended up in the shippping lanes. They could hear a freighter nearby. Not good.

Now that I'm taking tech courses all of this stuff is getting drilled into me, S-drills, bubble checks you name it.

 

[pengwe]

I can't say we practise skills much, though I'm always meaning to. I have found, though, that when we do practise, they are generally harder than I remember. They are not involved, and doing them on land is a no-brainer, but being underwater is somehow more complicated.

 

[gcbryan]

...
To respond to a couple of Gray's points (good points, by the way) ...

SMB deployment is a useful skill for anyone diving off a boat here. I can think of several sites that are commonly visited by local dive charters that are current sensitive. Getting blown off a site sometimes the bottom's going to drop away beneath you as the current takes you away from the structure you were diving on. Had it happen to me and a couple dive buddies in the San Juans just last year, in fact. Shooting a bag serves the dual purpose of giving you a visual reference for your ascent and giving the boat a visual reference on where you are ... since a proper ascent will take a few minutes.

As to practicing the OOA skills ... I can think of one former diver in our area who might be alive today if she'd been more comfortable doing an OOA ... rather than bolting to the surface and embolizing. Her buddy was with her, and had air to donate ... but from all accounts it sounds like a large part of the accident involved a lack of familiarity with doing the skill.
...
... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Although I get your point of course what I was specifically getting at is even though shooting a bag is a useful skill to have in many cases one is shooting a bag because one has a bag.

For instance, I'm sure you were on many boats in similar circumstances before you knew anything about shooting bags and yet the captain still managed to pick you up.

In a similar vein, I understand air sharing drills with an inexperienced diver which was the case in your example. However, my example was practicing air sharing between two experienced divers which was the current situation. I excluded mentoring dives from my question.

So to pose it a different way. If neither you nor Lynne were to practice air sharing ever again if you two were diving together in 5 years and you had an actual OOA situation do you have any doubt regarding your ability to successfully do it at that point in time?

It seems to me many of the skills dives are between two people who already have those skills and aren't likely to lose them. Practicing for cave or wreck penetration is another thing altogether of course.

 

[ClayJar]

So to pose it a different way. If neither you nor Lynne were to practice air sharing ever again if you two were diving together in 5 years and you had an actual OOA situation do you have any doubt regarding your ability to successfully do it at that point in time?

I would have thought that air sharing was likely to be one of those things that stick with people. Even if it's a royal mess when they need it, they can probably do it well enough to... well, at least to not die.

Well, last Sunday, we had a spring party at a local shop here. I was basically just wandering around listening (hey, it's a hobby), and one conversation rather fascinated me. One group of people got into a conversation about running out of air. One had gone OOA at about 15' at the end of a long (>2 hour) dive. Another had gone OOA when he was younger and dumber. And so the stories went. They were nothing unexpected, and they seemed rather representative of what I would expect in a fairly random (i.e. non-ScubaBoard) selection of divers.

What took me somewhat by surprise was that in each case, the diver telling the story mentioned a failure of their buddy to share air.

In the shallow, long story, the buddy didn't understand the OOA diver. She signaled, but her buddy basically just smiled and didn't really respond. She said that if she'd been deeper, she'd have gone for his air, but at 15', she just exhaled her way to the surface. Once there, she went to inflate her BC, couldn't, and basically ended up treading water. If they'd practiced sharing air, she wouldn't have had to CESA, and if she'd practiced orally inflating her BC, she would've easily had flotation at the surface.

In the younger and dumber story, they were on a normal dive when the diver went OOA. He went to his buddy for air, but his buddy actually refused to share. He ended up heading quickly to the surface. He suffered no apparent ill effects, but had they been practiced in sharing air, would his urgent request have been refused?

The standard assumption is that if you go OOA, your buddy will be there to bail you out. Obviously, that's not always the case (your buddy may be just about OOA, too, especially if you have similar air consumption), but it's generally accepted. Hearing several stories in which air sharing did not happen makes me suspect the assumption.

Anyway, having heard several stories last Sunday in which divers' OOA experience included a failure of air sharing, I believe I'll start being more proactive about practicing "real" (i.e. non-stationary) air shares. If I help people practice sharing air, perhaps the assumption that air will be shared will become more true than it was in each of the stories from the party.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Although I get your point of course what I was specifically getting at is even though shooting a bag is a useful skill to have in many cases one is shooting a bag because one has a bag.

For instance, I'm sure you were on many boats in similar circumstances before you knew anything about shooting bags and yet the captain still managed to pick you up.

Yes ... but on the other hand, I have been on boats ... including the recent liveaboard in Komodo ... that required all divers to carry an SMB. They did not require you to be able to shoot it from depth ... but considering the currents in some cases, waiting till you reach the surface to deploy it may have defeated the purpose of having the bag.

In a similar vein, I understand air sharing drills with an inexperienced diver which was the case in your example. However, my example was practicing air sharing between two experienced divers which was the current situation. I excluded mentoring dives from my question.

So to pose it a different way. If neither you nor Lynne were to practice air sharing ever again if you two were diving together in 5 years and you had an actual OOA situation do you have any doubt regarding your ability to successfully do it at that point in time?

It seems to me many of the skills dives are between two people who already have those skills and aren't likely to lose them. Practicing for cave or wreck penetration is another thing altogether of course.

As in most things diving, the most appropriate answer is "it depends". I think that if it were in a typical recreational situation that yes, you'd retain adequate knowledge to be able to do it successfully. It might not be pretty, or go flawlessly ... but you'd get the job done.

On the other hand, it would really depend on what else was going on. The reason people practice is so that we can do these things comfortably while task-loaded ... because often when there's a diving emergency it isn't just one thing that went wrong, and you just don't have the bandwidth to be trying to remember what you learned five years ago in order to take care of the problem.

I think a lot of this boils down to what you consider an adequate level of comfort and confidence. Dealing with a problem causes stress ... and underwater, stress is not your friend. It causes you to neglect or overlook things that you ought to be paying attention to.

We're all different, and have different tolerance levels for stress. But to my concern, it just makes sense to practice your skills to the point where you have confidence in your ability to deal with an unforeseen problem should it occur. On the other hand, my tolerance level is far less than some folks I know ... and therefore I rarely do dives that are purely for skills practice. I prefer integrating my practice into what is otherwise just another fun dive.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[shoredivr]

One group of people got into a conversation about running out of air. One had gone OOA at about 15' at the end of a long (>2 hour) dive. Another had gone OOA when he was younger and dumber.

What took me somewhat by surprise was that in each case, the diver telling the story mentioned a failure of their buddy to share air.

In the younger and dumber story, they were on a normal dive when the diver went OOA. He went to his buddy for air, but his buddy actually refused to share.

The standard assumption is that if you go OOA, your buddy will be there to bail you out. Obviously, that's not always the case (your buddy may be just about OOA, too, especially if you have similar air consumption), but it's generally accepted. Hearing several stories in which air sharing did not happen makes me suspect the assumption.

Anyway, having heard several stories last Sunday in which divers' OOA experience included a failure of air sharing, I believe I'll start being more proactive about practicing "real" (i.e. non-stationary) air shares. If I help people practice sharing air, perhaps the assumption that air will be shared will become more true than it was in each of the stories from the party.

Sort of shoots the ol' "buddy is always there to help" concept in the foot, no? I'll stick with bailout bottle or doubles, those buddies aren't reluctant to share or rusty in skills

I also include some kind of skills set on nearly every dive, I think of it as practice, really. Also, with the hard water we get here in the winter, my local dive shop runs pool sessions every month for skills practices.

 

[fishdelasol]

My usual buddy and I are totally new divers with less than 20 dives and we practice OOA at the end of our dives when we ascend. We also have signals to remind each other about our trim/buoyancy....I know we aren't very good at those skills, yet. We are still both very busy underwater and aware of it. We will both be calm and still going along the reef and then something or another changes and my buoyancy is all off. It just seems like some days we get it and then one of us will have a dive where we feel like we should stick to kiddie pools and water wings (just kidding-we're not that bad).

 

[Rick Inman]

Although I get your point of course what I was specifically getting at is even though shooting a bag is a useful skill to have in many cases one is shooting a bag because one has a bag.

I just did a charter here in FL where the Capt. asked every diver to shoot a bag as soon as possible during ascent. The current was too much to come up the line, so we were all doing drifting ascents, and people were ascending at different times, so they wanted bags shot from depth on each diver so they could track them.

One diver didn't do it, and (according to my wife who was on the boat) the crew was a bit nervous until everyone surfaced.

 

[gcbryan]

I just did a charter here in FL where the Capt. asked every diver to shoot a bag as soon as possible during ascent. The current was too much to come up the line, so we were all doing drifting ascents, and people were ascending at different times, so they wanted bags shot from depth on each diver so they could track them.

One diver didn't do it, and (according to my wife who was on the boat) the crew was a bit nervous until everyone surfaced.

Interesting. Was this a recreational dive?