Class Cancelled

I was supposed to go to the Giboa, Ohio quarry this weekend for my water portion of the navigation class I am taking. On Friday morning our instructor's wife (who is my running partner) called to say her husband came down with the flu. As a group our first thought was NO ABORT the trip - the combination of driving 4+ hours, cold water diving, being the instructor on top of not feeling well was not a good combination. This was my first experience with having to abort not only a dive but a dive trip and you know what, I feel great about it. My hat is off to everyone who makes that decision. Sure at first you are a little disappointed, but today our group is all healthy and are already planning when the make up trip will be. Infact some of us are going diving locally this afternoon. Plus this just gives me one more chance to practice with that compass.

Here is to all that say NO to a dive when necessary.

Laine

Hi Laine, I moved your thread over here to ther general discusison. I am sorry your class was canceled, but you gotta do what you gotta do. I've aborted several dives and my rule is that anyone can call a dive at any time for any reason. If something doesn't feel right it probably isn't right.

-kate

............it still stinks to have to abort. Especially if you plan all week for a dive. The same happened here. I had planned to go Wednesday but........RAIN and WIND...they don't work out to well when you dive from a boat.

Butch eace:

Thanks for your comments. I might have given you the impression that we did not want to abort the trip by the NO ABORT statement. What the group meant was No (to going) and yes Abort the dive trip. Sorry if I made it sound like we still wanted to go and take an unnecessary risk. I can seen why you might have been led to that conclusion. I don't always type in a way to convey the correct message. Hope this clarifies my reason for starting this thread.

Laine

Lanie

"He who aborts the dive today, gets to dive another day!"

I've aborted lots of dives due to rough weather, ripping current, bad vis. sickness (natural and self-induced) etc.. Tomorrow is always good for diving too.

Ken

I've learned that as a general rule of thumb 1 out of every 5 of my planned dives will not happen for a variety of reasons. If it's a wreck charter on the Great Lakes, it becomes 1 out of every 3. It used to frustrate me but I always have a backup plan now.

I was teaching an advanced class last week and there was a guy on it who was massive. 6'2 and maybe 230pounds. He came across as being very confident, yet when we got into the water he had a never ending stream of problems. Too much weight, too little weight, BC not inflating correctly etc etc.

There were four other people in the class and when it was time to go down I held him back and let everyone go down ahead of him. He was breathing hard but seemed OK, so I signaled him to head down. All looked ok and then at 9ft he shot to the surface. I went after him and after calming him down asked if he wanted to give it another try.

(he had a panic attact and I later found out that it had happened once before) He said no, there will always be another dive, and if I dive now I know that I just won't enjoy it. With out me prompting him, because I was prepared to give it another try, he said the best thing for him to do was to get out...and he did.

I have no idea what the other students in the class thought but I applaud divers making those decisions and not bowing to peer pressure. And he was right....there will always be another dive.

Hocky

Having once done a pool session (max 2m) with a slight cold and remembering the pain that brought on I will never slam anyone for aborting a dive through illness - in fact if I detect even a slight sniffle in anyone under my care I will point out the problems to them again.

It's just not worth it - there is always another day....

Jonathan