Would you let a near death experience stop you? My encounter

[PM-Performance]

Well I was finishing up my AOW dives on Sunday. Nothing really crazy, I think we planned on like a 90ft dive in this quarry. The water was colder then the previous days it felt, but nothing unexpected.
We did our decent close to a pier and just kept close to that on the decent.
We were going down and the instructor was helping this train wreck of a lady in our class. I got away from here so I didnt get tangled up.
So I noticed my primary reg started to free flow at about 70ft. Likely due to the water temps. So I messed with it and showed my instructor. I got the craps of it and dropped it and grabbed my back up. . .. rather then my Pony.. . This is where the problem started.
I showed my instructor the problem and grabbed for my back up off my 1st stage since it was breathing correctly for the time being.
He went behind me I was assuming to shut my tank off for a sec and to put it back on to see if that helped the free flow. He apparently thought I had my pony in my mouth.
I didnt feel the air go off, so I figured he was looking for something else.
All the sudden on my next inhale I felt no air. To say the least I freaked out cuz I was at full exhale.
I went to find my pony reg, but with all the new gear on and panicking it made it harder to get.
I then grabbed onto the instructor for dear life trying to find his pony reg. He said I had it in my hand and he was trying to get it in my mouth, but I was already well beyond panic mode and swallowed a bunch of mid 40 degree water.
Instead of wrapping him up more, my last ditch effort was to get to the surface and deal with the consequences if I made it.
So I did all I could to see light. I shot up swallowing air and gasping the whole way. i didnt see we were actually under the pier at that point and I bounced my head off one of the beams on the way up. As I hit it I thought I was gone for sure. Figured all my stuff would get tangled and that was it.
Somehow I bounced off it and managed to just barely hit the surface before I passed out.
I popped out under the pier and was hyper ventilating gasping for air. My instructor was holding onto me the whole time trying to get me to hold onto the pier and get me to calm down.
I apparently broke my inflator hose on the way up too. so my BC wasnt holding air. Thank got for those beams on hold onto even though my head hurts.

We ended the dive day for obvious reasons. My instructor checked me out and comforted me. He said not to let it get to me, it happens and will help me realize what not to do for next time.

I am fine, but still freaked out thinking about getting back in the water. I dunno if my life is worth it. I think that if I wouldnt have been near the pier to grab onto and hyper ventilating with the hole in my BC now too, I would have sunk back down and drown before catching my breath if open water.
Just plain scary.

For next time I deff know to make my Pony reg closer to me then my backup reg. That is the main lesson.

Anyone here come to a close call like this and feel Ok about getting back into the water? I love diving and all, but my brother in law drowned like 2 weeks ago and I saw his face the whole way up thinking this was it. its all over. Im still somewhat yooung and I know my wife doesnt like me diving at all let alone after I told her this.
How would you all handle this?

 

[ianr33]

For next time I deff know to make my Pony reg closer to me then my backup reg. That is the main lesson.

Dont mean to put you down or anything ,but diving with a competant buddy,preferably one with a long hose,would have made this a non event rather than a life threatening situation.

 

[Teamcasa]

So you are this guy?
http://www.scubaboard.com/showthread.php?t=187358

Panic is never a good thing. Good thing your made it.
In the future, dive with a consistent and competent buddy and practice OOA drills frequently and at least once every dive until you can do it by reaction. Practice does NOT make perfect – it makes permanent.

Dave

 

[Web Monkey]

Anyone here come to a close call like this and feel Ok about getting back into the water? I love diving and all, but my brother in law drowned like 2 weeks ago and I saw his face the whole way up thinking this was it. its all over. Im still somewhat yooung and I know my wife doesnt like me diving at all let alone after I told her this.
How would you all handle this?

You need a good buddy and you need to be a good buddy, and you need more training in order to properly handle exactly this situation.

Regardless of whether your OOA was caused by human error, intent or mechanical failure, your response should always be to go to your buddy for air. This also means that your buddy should always be right near by (not more than a couple of seconds away).

Having that response down so it's a non-issue is the difference between every dive being a potential fatality or just another nice dive where something interesting happened.

Failures happen all the time. You just need to be ready for them.

In this case your instructor turned off your tank. The next time it could be a clogged tank valve or a sticking gauge. The cause really doesn't matter, since the response should be the same.

Terry

 

[PM-Performance]

I just reponded on the other post with more thoughts.
Sorry i didnt know this was a repost. I didnt see his thread.
Yes a few things were done wrong. I deff know to mount the pony reg closer next time and be more aware of what is being done on my set up while im breathing off it.
When you panic things deff go downhill quick.
Once you breath in pure water, all thought process leaves and survival instincts kick in.

 

[TSandM]

I think this story highlights why a lot of people have issues with the AOW class.

Handling an OOA situation is not all that difficult, but the first time you have to do it should not be at 90 feet. If you had had time in shallow water to practice switching from your primary to your pony reg, or accepting air from your buddy, then this situation would have been startling but not dangerous. What made it dangerous was your unfamiliarity with your equipment and with the procedures to use that equipment in an emergency . . . Which you didn't have, until your instructor turned off the gas you were breathing. This was, in my opinion, a HUGE mistake on his part, and really pretty inexcusable.

So -- We have a big error made by an instructor, which precipitated a true emergency at deep depth with what I assume was a novice diver, who had not had an opportunity to practice critical skills in a low-stress environment prior to having to use them for real. This was a recipe for a injury or death, to me.

A few weeks ago, I spent three full, long DAYS (10 to 12 hours a day) in a class designed to teach what that agency feels is the MINIMUM academic information and in-water competency required to dive in the 100 foot range. I took the class with about 275 dives, and I didn't pass it (in fact, we didn't finish it). The idea that you can be taken to 100 feet in an AOW class and be safe if anything goes wrong is just nuts, if you ask me. If nothing goes wrong, as nothing did during my AOW deep dive, everybody's fine. But if you have a significant problem of any kind, you have, in your and my case, one instructor managing two novice students a hundred feet underwater, and there's an awful long time between there and the surface for somebody to drown or embolize.

 

[mark G]

am I reading this right you did a emergency ascent from 70 ft?

 

[DBailey]

Dont mean to put you down or anything ,but diving with a competant buddy,preferably one with a long hose,would have made this a non event rather than a life threatening situation.

Trying to figure out how the long hose would have made a difference here. I never got the impression that PM-Performance was ever breathing off someone else's gas.

 

[PM-Performance]

Trying to figure out how the long hose would have made a difference here. I never got the impression that PM-Performance was ever breathing off someone else's gas.

I didnt get to breathe off his gas. I freaked out and couldnt get the reg in my hand I thought, but he said I had it the whole time.
He had a 9ft yellow hose.
I just freaked out and grabbed at the wrong area I guess.
We did a skill the day before grabbing for the pony and swapping regs. But I honestly dont think i had it set up to the best position for my body type and gear set up.

I have had some really good dives, and quite a few dives alot deeper then this. Just handled the situation wrong.

 

[TSandM]

Well, let me contrast this with my free-flow experience of a couple of years ago. When my reg free-flowed, I went to my backup and tried to get the free flow stopped by the maneuvers I knew -- shaking the reg, exhaling sharply through it, purging it, managing the venturi adjustment -- and nothing worked. Within a few seconds (certainly no more than 30) I was on my companion's long hose and we had initiated an ascent. My other teammate was going to shut my valve during the ascent, but was waved off by the instructor (I'm still not sure why). We did a reasonably organized ascent, given that I wasn't very good at them then and I was in the middle of a cloud of loud and distracting bubbles. Nobody got hurt, and nobody got very frightened, either. But we had all practiced air-sharing A LOT, and air-sharing ascents at least a little, so nothing was new and nothing got fumbled. And nobody turned off a valve anybody was breathing, either.