Very, very proud of my dive buddy

[bsumner]

I don't know what the problem with the link was, but I think I fixed it -- at least, it now works for me.

The link worked fine for me and the article was well written and informative...thanks for posting.

 

[johnsona1503]

I have only made 5 dives and dont understand a couple things about what happend. #1 if you are at the 15' safety stop when you noticed your buddies belt gone, should you have went back down to get the weight belt while sharing air? #2 I only know about integrated weight system and the weights do not come out very easy when I intentionaly remove them. Was she using weights on a belt that just buckles around your waist?

Thanks to this board I have learned 10 times in 1 week of reading! I will practice before my next dive on weight removal untill its close to a quick draw.

Sorry I didn't mean it to be criticiziing when aking about retreaving the belt, I just do not understand the entire danger involved as long as no one panicked and kept breathing or at least exhaling if you poped to the top from 15'. Could someone go over the worst case scenario, because I could see something like this happening with me and a buddy. Until I read this board I thought is was a rare thing to be OOA with me checking gauge every ten minutes.

 

[raviepoo]

I have only made 5 dives and dont understand a couple things about what happend. #1 if you are at the 15' safety stop when you noticed your buddies belt gone, should you have went back down to get the weight belt while sharing air? #2 I only know about integrated weight system and the weights do not come out very easy when I intentionaly remove them. Was she using weights on a belt that just buckles around your waist?

Thanks to this board I have learned 10 times in 1 week of reading! I will practice before my next dive on weight removal untill its close to a quick draw.

Sorry I didn't mean it to be criticiziing when aking about retreaving the belt, I just do not understand the entire danger involved as long as no one panicked and kept breathing or at least exhaling if you poped to the top from 15'. Could someone go over the worst case scenario, because I could see something like this happening with me and a buddy. Until I read this board I thought is was a rare thing to be OOA with me checking gauge every ten minutes.

I'd be happy to answer your questions.

We were making our ascent towards the safety stop at the Casino Dive Park on Catalina Island. I don't remember exactly how deep we were but I know we hadn't made it to 15 ft yet. I like to do deep stops on dives of more than 60 ft. I think the belt came off somewhere around 30 ft. Basically, we were following the bottom to shallower depths. She was wearing a belt and the buckle must have come undone. It was just a few feet below her on the bottom. I don't remember whether I grabbed ahold of the kelp to keep us from popping up. Might have. Just don't remember. I did have a hold on her.

The goal is to always do a controlled ascent. Can you do that if you lose your weight belt? Thankfully I have never had to try. I think I could do it in tropical waterwearing a 3 mm suit and losing my 10lb belt. In a kelp forest wearing 7mm after losing the 24 lbs on my belt? I don't know.

You can ascend safely from 15 ft (or deeper.) There are no guarantees though. Remember, the largest change in pressure takes place during that final 30 feet of your ascent. From 30 ft to zero ft you are cutting your pressure in half. It definitely IS possible to get injured by zooming up to the surface at the end of the safety stop.

A diver who pops to the surface from 15 - 20 feet might not get injured. Then again they might. It depends on a lot of factors - length of dive, exposure to nitrogen, what gas is being used, are they hydrated, are they in poor physical condition, did they swim very hard during the dive? There is no recipe for dive injury. It's all theoretical.

My buddy is young. She is a triathelete in excellent physical condition. She swam very hard on that dive. We had been doing multiple dives over a period of several days. We were breathing air. Our deepest dive was to 104 ft and we pushed the no deco limits on that one just a wee bit out of my (admitedly conservative) comfort level. Would one of us have been injured if we had both popped up? We wouldn't have known until the symptoms showed up. Thankfully it never came to that.

OOA situations can be rare. It all depends on the diver. My hubby and I share air at the end of almost every dive because I have tiny lungs and he sucks gas like a hoover. He never sucks his tank dry though.

Yes, you SHOULD be checking your gauges all the time. That's all it takes (excluding exipment failure) to prevent an OOA situation in YOURELF. But do you know who you will be diving with if you show up on a boat with no buddy? Do you know whether you will be the pesron closest at hand when a "same ocean" diver needs to grab on to any old octo? It's good to be prepared for any eventuality.