Dsix36
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I remember a post here from someone here who got convinced to bail out from a CO2 hit by their team, and I had an instructor who talked about getting convinced by the people on her team shoving regulators at her face that she wasn’t OK and just having buoyancy issues. Both were CO2 hits that presented as confusion and clumbsiness, not breathing issues.
And another instructor talked about someone who managed to go diving without a scrubber installed. (Lots of layers of fail there) They got saved by another random diver, not an actual buddy, who decided that the unconcious diver they came across was in major distress and got them to the surface in time.
So I’m not convinced that a buddy won’t help a CCR diver having a really bad day.
As Caveeagle stated there is a slim chance, not impossible. In your scenario it is definitely best to have the buddy there. I can testify for the confusion and lack of functioning brain cells during a hit and I was already bailed out. I would make a wild guess and say that 95% of the time the diver is aware of the CO2 issue and it is a matter of self rescue. If they wait too long it can easily become impossible to make the actual switch and an entire team can not help until the diver blacks out. getting a diver to get go of the mouthpiece during an extreme hit will never happen willingly.
Being vigilant about monitoring your breathing rate vs. workload is paramount in this to know if bailing out is necessary, BEFORE it is too late. I will admit that the warning signs were there for me but I thought I could go just a little bit further. Denial, stupidity, lack of experience, superman complex, or whatever else you want to call it almost got me. I feel extremely fortunate that I finally got my s**t together enough to manage a bailout, even though It was difficult as heck to make the timing happen without ever being able to hold my breath.