davidbaraff
Contributor
In the end, not so big a deal---but for seven to eight seconds, a total sense of shock (in the back of my mind)... The story goes like this (stop now if you don't like overly long narrated stories that are not a big deal by the time you get to their conclusion...)
It was my first day diving in Belize (San Pedro, to be precise). The local diving is done off of fairly small boats, where you do a back-roll into the water, and where they do a short 5 minute drive from their dock, out past the reef. On this day, it was a lot bigger swells than I'm used to, given the small size of the boat---getting out there was a real roller coaster! (In retrospect, I'd say the swells were 3-4 feet, but with a short period, so they came fairly quickly.) The other thing is, I very rarely do back-rolls into the water---a giant stride entry is a piece of cake and I love doing them off of boats, but I hate the feeling of hitting the water backward and not knowing which way is up for a second, so the rolls, particularly in the choppy water, were already concerning me. As such, I wasn't paying as much attention as I might have to a woman next to me, part of a husband and wife team, who was commenting that they both had new BCD's for this trip, and neither had used them yet before. [Cue ominous music...]
On the dock, as we were getting ready to go, the DM took a look at me, wearing a full length wet suit, and asked me how much weight I had in my BCD. I answered "10 lbs" and he frowned at me, and said, "are you sure that's the right amount of weight for you?" Well, I'd been diving in exactly the same gear configuration, 2 days previous, in Grand Cayman, so I just said, "I think 10 lbs is good. I'd really rather not take any out, but I will if you feel like that's too much." He said, "No, I don't think you can get down in that wetsuit in 10 lbs. You should take more."
Like I said, I'd been using 10 lbs for the past 4 days, so I knew it was fine. So I just said, "I'm good. I'm sure of it." That seemed to satisfy him. (FYI: This has nothing to do with the incident, but it ties in at the end.)
So there we are out past the reef, we're gearing up, people are getting in the water (there are only 5 divers so it doesn't take long), and it turns out I'm going to be the last person out. I'm sitting on the edge of the boat, just about ready to go, trying to nerve myself to push over backward, when I realize the DM's attention is partially on me but also on----something else. I'm about to lean back when he yells something. So I grab the edge of the boat to avoid topping over, and:
"Should I go?" I say.
"--------!" he says---in Spanish. (I don't speak Spanish.)
"Yes? No?" I say.
Very agitatedly now, he yells:
"------ @#$!!!" and follows this up with a motion which I decide likely means, "Get the hell off the boat! Right now!"
So I roll in.
I come up, orient myself, look up at the boat and give the I'm OK signal. But I realize the DM isn't looking in my direction: he's scrambling at the back of the boat, and I see he is trying to reach someone in the water. (There is a second person in the boat, the driver, at the controls, about 3 feet away from the DM. Like I said, small boat.) The woman of the husband and wife team---(I would find out later the husband had dropped down to the bottom a few minutes earlier, and didn't know till much later what was going on---so much for buddy teams)---is floating, face down, near the back of the boat.
Way too near the back of the boat, it suddenly strikes me: I realize they can't propel the boat because she's drifting smack into where the propellors are, and they might hit her with the prop; at the same time, they need to reach her, and they also don't want her banged into with the boat, due to the wave action, which is pretty strong.
I'm pretty close to her, so once I realize this is a situation, I swim over to her. (And boy I am extremely glad that my weighting is such that I don't go down unless I want to. And that I always I splash in with a good amount of air in my BCD. Not sure if I would have thought of it if I'd needed to adjust, but I know I didn't inflate my BCD at all during this time. I'd like to think it's because a part of my brain knew there was no need.)
I reach her, and she is not only face down, she is bent at the waist, oddly, her head hanging down a foot or two under the water, and she is just. Not. Moving.
And this is the oddest part of the story to me: part of my brain said, "Wow. Someone is actually drowning in front of you. This is a real incident. They'll have to take you back to the dive shop, meet with people, etc. Today's diving is done." It was a really strong reaction in the back of my brain, that kind of sharp disbelieving shock that "no, this isn't really happening. Is it?"
I grabbed her, tried to get her upright, failed the first time. No reaction from her still. Some O/W class training wakes up, and reminds me that if you grab the person by the tank valve, you can far more easily turn them over. (Yeah, and approach from the left or something like that. Not relevant in this situation.) I did, got her turned over in the water. To my surprise, she starts talking once her head comes out of the water.
"Oh. So you're ok?" I said. (I almost opened with, "Oh, so you're not dead?" but I guess I thought I should be more diplomatic at the last second.)
"No, " she said. At this time, I realized that both her regulator was free-flowing (and it would turn out, her BCD too, was over-inflating.)
I had her by the strap vest by now, had pulled out my octo, and offered it to her. She decided she was OK enough not to need it. I was thinking of just turning her air off because I was right there, and the regulator was still free-flowing, but in the end decided against it. (In retrospect, I think that was good. The only reason for turning her air off would be to save her dive. With her air still on, she had more options.) Somewhere around that time, I realize the DM had shown up and was in the water.
End of incident.
(And now you're saying, "but how does the part about how well you're weighted [or not] tie in?") Well...
He starts swimming her back to the boat, turns around at me then, and says, a bit agitatedly:
"Sir, please just drop down to stay out of the way now! I've got her."
To which I replied (actually, I was on my snorkel by now: I had switched, to save some air because I didn't know how long it was going to take before this dive actually got started, and I was pretty sure I had huffed down enough already on the surface when my regulator was still in):
"I will---as soon as my breathing returns to normal!!"
He kind of blinked at me and just said, "Oh. Ok", then turned his attention back to her.
I really can descend with the weight configuration I had on---but there was no way could I get enough air out of my lungs to descend with that configuration when I was breathing that hard! When he turned away from me, I did a surface dive, clawed myself down about 10 feet, then just forced myself to breath slowly while listening to my heart hammering away. After about 2 minutes, my heart slowed down and I could breath normally. Because the last thing I wanted was having to hear the DM say, "Yeah, I knew you needed more weight than that..."
First time I've been in a situation where I thought somebody was having a major incident, though they weren't.
Notes:
(1) If the woman had had a snorkel, maybe she would have been breathing off of that, instead of whatever it was that had her head in the water (maybe the jacket pusher her forward from inflating, maybe she thought this was how to fix a free-flow --- i'll never know.)
(2) If she'd known how to use her BCD properly (I'm positive she hit the wrong button and just kept inflating it) I don't think this would have occurred.
(3) I should probably learn a bit more Spanish.
(4) What's the point of buddy teams if you head down before your buddy and/or don't watch for them?
It was my first day diving in Belize (San Pedro, to be precise). The local diving is done off of fairly small boats, where you do a back-roll into the water, and where they do a short 5 minute drive from their dock, out past the reef. On this day, it was a lot bigger swells than I'm used to, given the small size of the boat---getting out there was a real roller coaster! (In retrospect, I'd say the swells were 3-4 feet, but with a short period, so they came fairly quickly.) The other thing is, I very rarely do back-rolls into the water---a giant stride entry is a piece of cake and I love doing them off of boats, but I hate the feeling of hitting the water backward and not knowing which way is up for a second, so the rolls, particularly in the choppy water, were already concerning me. As such, I wasn't paying as much attention as I might have to a woman next to me, part of a husband and wife team, who was commenting that they both had new BCD's for this trip, and neither had used them yet before. [Cue ominous music...]
On the dock, as we were getting ready to go, the DM took a look at me, wearing a full length wet suit, and asked me how much weight I had in my BCD. I answered "10 lbs" and he frowned at me, and said, "are you sure that's the right amount of weight for you?" Well, I'd been diving in exactly the same gear configuration, 2 days previous, in Grand Cayman, so I just said, "I think 10 lbs is good. I'd really rather not take any out, but I will if you feel like that's too much." He said, "No, I don't think you can get down in that wetsuit in 10 lbs. You should take more."
Like I said, I'd been using 10 lbs for the past 4 days, so I knew it was fine. So I just said, "I'm good. I'm sure of it." That seemed to satisfy him. (FYI: This has nothing to do with the incident, but it ties in at the end.)
So there we are out past the reef, we're gearing up, people are getting in the water (there are only 5 divers so it doesn't take long), and it turns out I'm going to be the last person out. I'm sitting on the edge of the boat, just about ready to go, trying to nerve myself to push over backward, when I realize the DM's attention is partially on me but also on----something else. I'm about to lean back when he yells something. So I grab the edge of the boat to avoid topping over, and:
"Should I go?" I say.
"--------!" he says---in Spanish. (I don't speak Spanish.)
"Yes? No?" I say.
Very agitatedly now, he yells:
"------ @#$!!!" and follows this up with a motion which I decide likely means, "Get the hell off the boat! Right now!"
So I roll in.
I come up, orient myself, look up at the boat and give the I'm OK signal. But I realize the DM isn't looking in my direction: he's scrambling at the back of the boat, and I see he is trying to reach someone in the water. (There is a second person in the boat, the driver, at the controls, about 3 feet away from the DM. Like I said, small boat.) The woman of the husband and wife team---(I would find out later the husband had dropped down to the bottom a few minutes earlier, and didn't know till much later what was going on---so much for buddy teams)---is floating, face down, near the back of the boat.
Way too near the back of the boat, it suddenly strikes me: I realize they can't propel the boat because she's drifting smack into where the propellors are, and they might hit her with the prop; at the same time, they need to reach her, and they also don't want her banged into with the boat, due to the wave action, which is pretty strong.
I'm pretty close to her, so once I realize this is a situation, I swim over to her. (And boy I am extremely glad that my weighting is such that I don't go down unless I want to. And that I always I splash in with a good amount of air in my BCD. Not sure if I would have thought of it if I'd needed to adjust, but I know I didn't inflate my BCD at all during this time. I'd like to think it's because a part of my brain knew there was no need.)
I reach her, and she is not only face down, she is bent at the waist, oddly, her head hanging down a foot or two under the water, and she is just. Not. Moving.
And this is the oddest part of the story to me: part of my brain said, "Wow. Someone is actually drowning in front of you. This is a real incident. They'll have to take you back to the dive shop, meet with people, etc. Today's diving is done." It was a really strong reaction in the back of my brain, that kind of sharp disbelieving shock that "no, this isn't really happening. Is it?"
I grabbed her, tried to get her upright, failed the first time. No reaction from her still. Some O/W class training wakes up, and reminds me that if you grab the person by the tank valve, you can far more easily turn them over. (Yeah, and approach from the left or something like that. Not relevant in this situation.) I did, got her turned over in the water. To my surprise, she starts talking once her head comes out of the water.
"Oh. So you're ok?" I said. (I almost opened with, "Oh, so you're not dead?" but I guess I thought I should be more diplomatic at the last second.)
"No, " she said. At this time, I realized that both her regulator was free-flowing (and it would turn out, her BCD too, was over-inflating.)
I had her by the strap vest by now, had pulled out my octo, and offered it to her. She decided she was OK enough not to need it. I was thinking of just turning her air off because I was right there, and the regulator was still free-flowing, but in the end decided against it. (In retrospect, I think that was good. The only reason for turning her air off would be to save her dive. With her air still on, she had more options.) Somewhere around that time, I realize the DM had shown up and was in the water.
End of incident.
(And now you're saying, "but how does the part about how well you're weighted [or not] tie in?") Well...
He starts swimming her back to the boat, turns around at me then, and says, a bit agitatedly:
"Sir, please just drop down to stay out of the way now! I've got her."
To which I replied (actually, I was on my snorkel by now: I had switched, to save some air because I didn't know how long it was going to take before this dive actually got started, and I was pretty sure I had huffed down enough already on the surface when my regulator was still in):
"I will---as soon as my breathing returns to normal!!"
He kind of blinked at me and just said, "Oh. Ok", then turned his attention back to her.
I really can descend with the weight configuration I had on---but there was no way could I get enough air out of my lungs to descend with that configuration when I was breathing that hard! When he turned away from me, I did a surface dive, clawed myself down about 10 feet, then just forced myself to breath slowly while listening to my heart hammering away. After about 2 minutes, my heart slowed down and I could breath normally. Because the last thing I wanted was having to hear the DM say, "Yeah, I knew you needed more weight than that..."
First time I've been in a situation where I thought somebody was having a major incident, though they weren't.
Notes:
(1) If the woman had had a snorkel, maybe she would have been breathing off of that, instead of whatever it was that had her head in the water (maybe the jacket pusher her forward from inflating, maybe she thought this was how to fix a free-flow --- i'll never know.)
(2) If she'd known how to use her BCD properly (I'm positive she hit the wrong button and just kept inflating it) I don't think this would have occurred.
(3) I should probably learn a bit more Spanish.
(4) What's the point of buddy teams if you head down before your buddy and/or don't watch for them?
