I had my first "interesting" experiance at Dutch springs this weekend while divemastering (and it wasn't even part of a course...).
My instructor was working with 2 students doing an "Advanced Nitrox" course.
One of the students had brought his girlfriend who was an Open Water diver with about 9 or 10 dives.
My instructor asked me to buddy up with her and go on a "touring" dive for fun while he worked with the 2 students.
We all geared up and got ready for entry.
At the last minute I find out that she has never dived with a pony bottle before but wants to as her boyfriend had given her a 19 ft3 bottle as a gift.
So OK, we talk about the fact that it will change her bouyancy and may pull to one side while she is swimming. She plans to simply have it with her to get used to wearing it but will not use it during the dive.
She and I buddy check each others gear. All looks OK and we enter the water.
The 5 of us head out for the helecopter where we will all descend together. Then as the 2 students begin their class the girl and I will go off and tour other sites while staying above 60 feet.
While surface swimming out to the helecopter on our backs, she has a minor freeflow from her primary reg.
We get that taken care of very quickly and all is well. We talk briefly about the lever on the side of the reg that can be moved to help prevent this when she doesn't have the reg in her mouth and then everyone is ready and we descend.
While the instructor and students penetrate the helecopter, we slowly circle the helecopter once at about 55 feet and look in at the class through the various openings.
She and I then take a bearing due East and head for the Comet (sunken boat at about 55-60 feet). We arrive dead on target and start looking around.
I hand her my larger light so she can peek into the bow hatch and see what's down in there.
She hands me the light back and as I'm putting the lanyard back on my wrist, I see her suddenly spit out her reg and grab her pony reg...
Hmmm... what's going on here?
She then signals "Out Of Air" and looks like she is getting slightly panicy but seems to be handling it OK for now.
I look at the reg she spit out and follow the hose back to her PONY BOTTLE...
Ah ha. She has been diving the wrong reg the whole dive and now she is on her primary.
No big problem. Now how to let her know this?
(Here is where I made a tactical error...)
I take the pony SPG and bring it up where she can see it is reading 0 PSI figuring that she will put 0 and 0 together and realize what happened...
Immediately, her eyes get big and she spits out her primary reg and grabs my octo...
I'm not sure what is wrong at this point but I immediately grab her shoulder strap and thumb the dive. She flashes an OK and a thumb back. I show her MY spg with 2000 PSI left and she calms down a lot at that point.
We begin a slow ascent, stop at 15 for 3 minutes and slowly surface together.
As we slowly swam back to the exit point, we talked over what happened.
When she switched to her "pony reg" after havng her primary stop breathing, she thought there was something wrong with her integrated console computer which still showed close to 3000 PSI.
When I showed her the 0 PSI pony guage she thought she was about to be out of air on the reg she had switched to and then grabbed for my octo.
All in all, she said she was glad to know that she could handle an OOA without panic and the fact I stayed so calm the whole time was a help for her as well.
I was glad she took the whole thing as a positive learning experience rather than as a bad experience to be frightend away from SCUBA diving.
My instructor complemented me on how I handled the situation after he talked with her for a few minutes about what happened.
She had the full tank left over for the the second dive (no pony or any unplannd excitement on this dive) and the day ended with everyone feeling prety good about the afternoons diving.
My instructor was working with 2 students doing an "Advanced Nitrox" course.
One of the students had brought his girlfriend who was an Open Water diver with about 9 or 10 dives.
My instructor asked me to buddy up with her and go on a "touring" dive for fun while he worked with the 2 students.
We all geared up and got ready for entry.
At the last minute I find out that she has never dived with a pony bottle before but wants to as her boyfriend had given her a 19 ft3 bottle as a gift.
So OK, we talk about the fact that it will change her bouyancy and may pull to one side while she is swimming. She plans to simply have it with her to get used to wearing it but will not use it during the dive.
She and I buddy check each others gear. All looks OK and we enter the water.
The 5 of us head out for the helecopter where we will all descend together. Then as the 2 students begin their class the girl and I will go off and tour other sites while staying above 60 feet.
While surface swimming out to the helecopter on our backs, she has a minor freeflow from her primary reg.
We get that taken care of very quickly and all is well. We talk briefly about the lever on the side of the reg that can be moved to help prevent this when she doesn't have the reg in her mouth and then everyone is ready and we descend.
While the instructor and students penetrate the helecopter, we slowly circle the helecopter once at about 55 feet and look in at the class through the various openings.
She and I then take a bearing due East and head for the Comet (sunken boat at about 55-60 feet). We arrive dead on target and start looking around.
I hand her my larger light so she can peek into the bow hatch and see what's down in there.
She hands me the light back and as I'm putting the lanyard back on my wrist, I see her suddenly spit out her reg and grab her pony reg...
Hmmm... what's going on here?
She then signals "Out Of Air" and looks like she is getting slightly panicy but seems to be handling it OK for now.
I look at the reg she spit out and follow the hose back to her PONY BOTTLE...
Ah ha. She has been diving the wrong reg the whole dive and now she is on her primary.
No big problem. Now how to let her know this?
(Here is where I made a tactical error...)
I take the pony SPG and bring it up where she can see it is reading 0 PSI figuring that she will put 0 and 0 together and realize what happened...
Immediately, her eyes get big and she spits out her primary reg and grabs my octo...
I'm not sure what is wrong at this point but I immediately grab her shoulder strap and thumb the dive. She flashes an OK and a thumb back. I show her MY spg with 2000 PSI left and she calms down a lot at that point.
We begin a slow ascent, stop at 15 for 3 minutes and slowly surface together.
As we slowly swam back to the exit point, we talked over what happened.
When she switched to her "pony reg" after havng her primary stop breathing, she thought there was something wrong with her integrated console computer which still showed close to 3000 PSI.
When I showed her the 0 PSI pony guage she thought she was about to be out of air on the reg she had switched to and then grabbed for my octo.
All in all, she said she was glad to know that she could handle an OOA without panic and the fact I stayed so calm the whole time was a help for her as well.
I was glad she took the whole thing as a positive learning experience rather than as a bad experience to be frightend away from SCUBA diving.
My instructor complemented me on how I handled the situation after he talked with her for a few minutes about what happened.
She had the full tank left over for the the second dive (no pony or any unplannd excitement on this dive) and the day ended with everyone feeling prety good about the afternoons diving.
