Don't know what happened

[Edward3c]

What is a Dive Leader? As I said in my first post, I am not diving professionally. But if I can use my skills to help others getting into this world with all safety measures, it is ok. i have failed this time. But as you understand, I am still wondering why I failed.

A Dive Leader is not a professional qualification, see the link.

 

[Dody]

Best response I have had to one of my posts in six months.

I don’t know because I can’t transport myself into the future. But I have a slight idea.
In one year, I will have more experience. Will the haters be different? No. But they will surely find other targets.

 

[Still Kicking]

What is a Dive Leader? As I said in my first post, I am not diving professionally. But if I can use my skills to help others getting into this world with all safety measures, it is ok. i have failed this time. But as you understand, I am still wondering why I failed.

Once again, if you are assisting with training you are diving professionally, whether you see it that way or not. That's an inescapable fact.

Secondly, no one on the Internet can know what exactly happend on that dive that caused you to fall behind. People have given dozens of educated guesses but you don't seem to think they fit so it will remain a mystery unless you eventually figure it out yourself after aquiring more experience.

Bottom line, I would suggest you focus on doing a bunch of fun diving well within your current training level in different environments if possible. You will naturally have experiences that cause you to grow and learn about the nuances of the sport that can't be taught in a class setting due to time limits. Enjoy the experience; don't rush the process.

You may want to seek out different instructors at some point if you want to progress with training to get a more rounded perspective. Your original instructor - great person though they may be - perhaps wasn't the greatest mentor.

 

[rmssetc]

Exactly. This is one of the things I do not understand. With 6kg (I used to dive smoothly with 5 with the old gear), when exhaling and a BCD without air, my head was totally submerged. However, I could not descend, even fully exhaling without someone pulling me down or being given 2 more kg. This within 2 minutes so no tank breathing issue.

I'm going to make the attempt to contribute something positive to this thread -- think of it like paying for all the popcorn while I enjoy the entertainment.

Based on your description above, and making the assumption that you were actually negatively buoyant with 6KG when you did the pre-dive weight check, my guess is that you had a significant amount of air in your BCD during the whole dive -- enough to make descending difficult and enough to add a lot of drag.

As someone with barely double your self-professed number of logged + un-logged dives, I know that it's quite possible to leave a bubble of air in the BCD, and I also know that when I'm stressed I find myself adding more air to the BCD, or not releasing as much as I would when comfortable. Perhaps this was happening for you, when you describe being stressed with the task of being a DM, with low viz, loosing contact with people under your care, etc.

 

[rmssetc]

In one year, I will have more experience. Will the haters be different? No. But they will surely find other targets.

Somehow, this bothers me more than all the other nonsense in this thread.

I truly hope that what you wrote above was just casual bad wording, and could attribute some of it to English not being your first language.

I truly hope that you do not believe that the multiple people with a great deal more experience who are trying to help you actually "hate" you and that you are somehow their "target".

 

[Dody]

A Dive Leader is not a professional qualification, see the link.

Ok. Really, I don’t want to regularly act as a DM or a DL. I just want to help as needed.

Once again, if you are assisting with training you are diving professionally, whether you see it that way or not. That's an inescapable fact.

Secondly, no one on the Internet can know what exactly happend on that dive that caused you to fall behind. People have given dozens of educated guesses but you don't seem to think they fit so it will remain a mystery unless you eventually figure it out yourself after aquiring more experience.

Bottom line, I would suggest you focus on doing a bunch of fun diving well within your current training level in different environments if possible. You will naturally have experiences that cause you to grow and learn about the nuances of the sport that can't be taught in a class setting due to time limits. Enjoy the experience; don't rush the process.

You may want to seek out different instructors at some point if you want to progress with training to get a more rounded perspective. Your original instructor - great person though they may be - perhaps wasn't the greatest mentor.

I usually really like your comments and accept most of them. But in this case, you are wrong. I am not saying that the educated guesses that people gave me don’t fit. I just did not get the silver bullet. Especially because some comments are contradictory or complementary. So I listen and integrate everything. I store it in my mental database. But do I take it as granted? No. Unless it is certain.

Much of my dives are fun dives. Just for the sake of diving. Within my boundaries. Never solo, never below 40 meters, no wreck or cave diving. No cold water. I have never done fresh water but I have nothing against it.
What can frustrate me is that some posters don’t understand that and interact while they should stay away. But this their right.

I'm going to make the attempt to contribute something positive to this thread -- think of it like paying for all the popcorn while I enjoy the entertainment.

Based on your description above, and making the assumption that you were actually negatively buoyant with 6KG when you did the pre-dive weight check, my guess is that you had a significant amount of air in your BCD during the whole dive -- enough to make descending difficult and enough to add a lot of drag.

As someone with barely double your self-professed number of logged + un-logged dives, I know that it's quite possible to leave a bubble of air in the BCD, and I also know that when I'm stressed I find myself adding more air to the BCD, or not releasing as much as I would when comfortable. Perhaps this was happening for you, when you describe being stressed with the task of being a DM, with low viz, loosing contact with people under your care, etc.

I never actually looked at bubbles in my BCD or wetsuit. I will. Thanks.

 

[Dody]

Somehow, this bothers me more than all the other nonsense in this thread.

I truly hope that what you wrote above was just casual bad wording, and could attribute some of it to English not being your first language.

I truly hope that you do not believe that the multiple people with a great deal more experience who are trying to help you actually "hate" you and that you are somehow their "target".

Truly? They are some very good people like you. And they are too many « jokers » that you can’t get rid of no matter how hard you try.
This is life. This is internet. We just have to live with it and find solutions for the future.

 

[eleniel]

OW in November. So that’s just about 6 months. Right.

 

[scubadada]

Hi @Dody

It may be that you have obtained most or all of your training and diving in the same place, too provincial. You may benefit from diving and or training in a different place, with different people, a fresh start and evaluation.

 

[Scuba Client]

First of all, I am a finned swimming instructor, and also a 3 stars CMAS diving instructor. From this position, I can say that most diving instructors do not know how to teach proper kicking techniques, and how to guide their students in finding the optimal fins for their legs.
Some free diving instructors have some good clue about fins and kicking, but only a finned swimming instructor knows all the tricks and techniques. Most scuba diving instructors, particularly tech instructors, have very strange believings, and often think that frog kicking is the best technique for every scenario (whilst it is the best only inside caves or wrecks, when there is risk of raising silt from the bottom).
When young, I and my wife (who also is both a scuba diving instructor and finned swimming instructor) worked at Maldives as dive masters, where there are incredibly strong currents inside the channels between open ocean and internal lagoon. People who do not master proper kicking are captured by the current and in no way they can swim against it.
The tricks for swimming against current in such conditions are:
1) be streamlined: best, at Maldives, is to use no diving suit, as the naked skin makes less friction than any suit. And no cloths, of course. Just use a Speedo.
2) do not use a jacket, just a very minimal rear bladder, kept rigorously empty (with no suit, there is no significant variation on buoyancy with depth) - at the time it was still allowed to dive without any BCD; now it is forbidden, you must have some sort of minimal BCD. But a 5-liters bladder is plenty enough.
3) use long freediving fins, of proper length, stiffness and angle between blade and foot based on your leg geometry (choosing the proper fins is a long process made by trials and errors)
4) use a proper kicking style, resulting by months of training in the pool under supervision of a finned swimming instructor
5) when the current is very strong you also need the extra thrust of your arms. But instead of "paddling", you must use your arms "in the proper way": the video posted here a couple of posts above is an excellent example on how the arms should be used for swimming underwater. Actually, proper propulsion with arms is almost as efficient as using long freediving fins, and definitely more efficient than frog kicking with rigid short fins.
6) When doing a significant effort swimming against current you cannot just "breath normally", You need to employ the same ventilation technique used with CC rebreathers, that is augmenting the vented volume and slowing down the ventilation rhythm, and performing an inspiratory pause of 4-5 seconds between each inhalation and each exhalation.
7) After a burst against the current, you often need to rest for a while, for avoiding to loose control of your breathing. For doing this safely and with minimal effort we were using a "coral hook": a stainless steel hook with an handle, which is used for anchoring you to the reef without damaging it too much.

Why swim against a current, when it's more fun to swim across and with it. Your proposed techniques can cause CO2 retention and hyperventilation. The long fins/different fin techniques, I agree.