Things that make you appreciate the team.

[Blackwood]

^^ Chris suggested the same thing (grabbing his backup).

I can't imagine we had been talking for more than about 10 seconds before Christian came along. Whole lotta options, and my mind was processing a ton of info. I was still in oh **** mode. Calm goes a long way.

 

[TSandM]

You know, life would be more pleasant if we never had these sorts of experiences, but NOTHING instills permanent lessons like a situation of stress. I'm quite sure you have taken away an array of lessons that will mold your future diving. I know every one of my "oops" experiences has resulted in changes in what I do.

 

[liuk3]

Kudos to you and your teammates, Marc. Sounds like it was a good learning experience. In my opinion, it's CF like this which often help to better develop you as a diver in terms of problem solving underwater. I'm pretty sure that I don't learn as much on dives that just go according to plan. The memorable and most educational ones are those technical dives where my buddy was taskloaded with significant issues, stress levels were very amped, and we had to stay calm to slowly work through the problem at depth or in the water column. I think that everyone (even if they won't admit it) has some breaking point. It's sometimes good to see where your personal limits might be. FWIW, having dove with you and know you, I still consider you one of the calmer and more level-headed divers I know.

 

[liuk3]

Not criticizing personal protocols but rather just an honest question regarding the backup light. Why would you clip off your backup light to the bungy of a gauge on your arm, rather than to one of the chest D-rings? I might be concerned that the bungee might not handle the stress as well as a metal D-ring? When needing to temporarily clip off the backup light, I've always just used my chest D-rings.

 

[Codyjp]

One other possibility Marc. Something I never even considered until I took a cave class.
Once you met up with Hirsch, just mug him for one of his backup lights, since it was tough to let him know what the problem is.

He has another (hopefully not stuck one)

Vis from 30 to surface for us was very poor and milky (verifying gas switches was pretty tough, requiring shining a light at exactly the right angle to not get all blown out)

It's also a very good exercise in adapting line-awareness to the vis, something I got reamed out for on a few dives a few years back.

Good that you got right back in the water though, and got that horse off your back!

I've did this once. It was kinda funny. I deployed my backup only to discover the batts appeared to be charged but it quicky faded after a couple minutes. I just showed the 'flash light' signal and then took what I needed. Of course, vis wasn't a mess.

Not criticizing personal protocols but rather just an honest question regarding the backup light. Why would you clip off your backup light to the bungy of a gauge on your arm, rather than to one of the chest D-rings? I might be concerned that the bungee might not handle the stress as well as a metal D-ring? When needing to temporarily clip off the backup light, I've always just used my chest D-rings.

I've got mine set up in such a way that if the bungee came off so would my wrist. If possible make it form a complete loop around your wrist.

What I took from this is the multiple layers of problems that led to this.
1) failed primary
2) lost backup
3) krillorama
4) night
5) deco obligations
6) jammed second backup

If you encountered any one, or two of these events alone it would have been a non issue. It is when you get multiple problems the odds start stacking against us that we get into trouble. Thanks for sharing and I'm glad everything worked out well in the end! Certainly your training, practice and experience paid off dividends.

 

[Blackwood]

Not criticizing personal protocols but rather just an honest question regarding the backup light. Why would you clip off your backup light to the bungy of a gauge on your arm, rather than to one of the chest D-rings? I might be concerned that the bungee might not handle the stress as well as a metal D-ring? When needing to temporarily clip off the backup light, I've always just used my chest D-rings.

Mainly because it's really weak relative to the primary.

Consider a situation where even a 21W HID only has about 1.5 feet of range. The ability to signal your team mates in an emergency would be severly compromised when your only light is a c-cell clipped off light.

Honestly the more I think about it the less if a 'big deal' it seems. So all I can do is honestly relate the significant stress I was experiencing - for the first time.

After Christian came along, I pretty much had a depth grip on his arm until we stated our final ascent. That means I was still on edge for 15 minutes afterwards.

 

[liuk3]

So you guys use the bungy on your gauges as a temporary clip for your backup light in order to gain potentially an arm's length extra distance for your backup light. Interesting. I might still be a little worried about the load being put on the wrist bungy as I wouldn't want to lose any of my gauges. On the other hand, I guess I'm clipping all sorts of stuff on the bungy in my pockets, and those bungies have still been holding. Thanks.

 

[Rainer]

You seem to have a misguided sense of the loading on the bungee from a clipped off back up light. If it hangs (and that would only happen if you dropped it) it puts extremely little strain on the bungee. Certainly way, way less than what it takes to pull over dry glove rings (which has never caused me any problems). I just don't see it being an issue (certainly compared to losing the back up light if you don't have it secured). In any case, all of my wrist gauges use two bungees, so losing one wouldn't mean losing the gauge. As you mentioned, think of all the things clipped off in your pockets (mask, wetnotes, shears, pre-rigged SMB, etc); ever have one of those fail?

So you guys use the bungy on your gauges as a temporary clip for your backup light in order to gain potentially an arm's length extra distance for your backup light. Interesting. I might still be a little worried about the load being put on the wrist bungy as I wouldn't want to lose any of my gauges. On the other hand, I guess I'm clipping all sorts of stuff on the bungy in my pockets, and those bungies have still been holding. Thanks.

 

[limeyx]

Oh, just one other thing (not directly related to Marc's experience I guess)

The day of the dive, Jamie and I analyzed the voltage of all our backups, and found 3 lacking the 4.5V minimum so replaced 9 C-cells.

The combination of deco, night and ocean prodded me to do what I ought to do far more often in ocean diving...once again the lessons learned from cave diving apply.

I think clipping off the backup to a gauge is fine for ocean diving, but I think it could be not the best tactic in a cave where the beam penetrates far more and would be pretty distracting.

 

[TSandM]

I don't think anybody is suggesting to clip the backup light off to the bungie while you're doing something (unless I'm misreading this). I think they're suggesting that clipping it off to the bungie while you are USING it, gives you a safety net if you get distracted and drop it. As I said, this is what I do with my camera. It never hangs from the bungie, but if I drop it, it won't head straight for the bottom. Having had this suggestion, I think I might well do this if I have to deploy a backup again in a cave, too. (And primary light failures just happen, no matter how careful you are!)