BSAC Diving Incident Report 2019

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Yes especially when the reports are actually concocted by those involved

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Story #4 Great Big Stuff Ups I Have Made

Published with permission of Mr. Trevor Jackson
By Trevor Jackson - Esperance Star

"I decided to do a night dive on a wreck that I was quite familiar with. I'd go in and practice swimming around without lights, laying lines, squeezing through gaps, practice gas switches and generally give myself a rough time of it.

It was a fairly calm sort of night, I anchored the Esperance Star above a wreck called the Etmor at Curtin Reef near Brisbane, put my gear on and waddled out to the back deck to jump straight in off the duckboard. I was facing east as I hit the water. Without knowing it, I rotated through 180 degrees during the descent, so when I hit the bottom, instead of facing east I was facing west. I could see the wreck through the dim water and swam over to it, making a right turn as I approached the hull. Because of the rotational descent, I was now actually heading to the northern end of the wreck, towards the stern, whilst the whole time thinking I was heading south towards the bow. I skipped up onto the deck and found the first hole I could, only turning on my lights as I actually entered the hull. Once inside I made a left turn, which I of course assumed would head me north into the familiar rooms of the Etmor. Instead, after swimming about 30 meters into the near black corridors, I came to a dead end where there shouldn’t have been one [or so I thought]. I sat there and pondered what had transpired for a minute or two and slowly figured out what must have gone wrong. No worries I thought. Ill just back track and find the exit, all was cool.

Murphy, my favorite Irishman, was about to come a knocking. Murphy was about to start laying down some of his law. I remember thinking, ‘well Ill be rooted if the light goes out’. Murph must have heard me and intervened, making it so. My primary light failed completely, but like most proficient tech heads, I carried a spare. In fact a brand new spare which had never been in the water, a brand new spare which had never been tested, because if it had been, I would have known that it knew my Irish friend as well, and it liked him better than me. Both lights failed. I was 24 meters down, lost inside a wreck in the middle of the night and with no real idea of the way out. To add insult to embarrassment, the crew of the boat was now so used to my long duration night dives that they probably wouldn’t start to worry for at least 2 hours.

At this point it would probably be stating the obvious that now was not the time to panic! I had a completely full Closed Circuit Rebreather, two full 125cft stage bottles, three reels and about 8 hours to get myself out before I ran out of gas. I sat on the inner decks of the Etmor and tried to nut out a solution. Time was on my side, if I just sat there and waited, I guess someone would have eventually come down, but there was no guarantee that they would find me, and night time penetrations were not normal practice. I had to get out myself. I pulled out my primary reel and attached the line to the nearest strong point, feeling around in the dark. I found a wall and ran along it, spooling off line as I went. A dead-end. I felt along the dead end and kept reeling out line the whole time; I came to another stop. ‘This isn’t going to work’, I thought, ‘All I’m doing here is creating a great big spiders web for myself and I am the Fly’. I had to figure out which wall ran north-south, and which ran east-west. The Etmor lies north-south, but I was so completely disorientated that on more than one occasion I had to feel for the direction of my exhaled bubbles to check if I was upright.

I came to one of the dead ends and pulled off a fin. Using it as a measuring tape, I crawled along the wall, tying a knot in the line every fin length. When I got the next dead end I found the start of the wall and repeated the process. All this took up precious time and gas but the end result was that I now knew that one wall was 34 ‘knots’ long and one was 18’knots’ long. The 34 ‘knot ‘ wall was the north-south wall. I knew that because I had seen plans of the Etmor and remembered it had a long room in its stern, running lengthways. All I had to do now was figure out which end was the end I had come in on, and then concentrate on finding the way out once I had done that. I remembered as I entered that I had swum through some cross bracing, steel girders that had formed an ‘X’ from the floor to the ceiling. I swam to one end of the long wall, swam out a few meters along the short wall, found a tie off point and did 5’ knot ‘ arcs out from that point. Nothing. I went a few meters more along the short wall and tried again, repeating this twice more, finding no cross bracing. I was at the wrong end, but at least I knew that at the other end I would find the way out.
I swam back along the long wall and started to search for a way out once I reached the end. I actually headbutted one of the cross braces while I looked. I remember swearing but I was also quite chuffed at this point because the exit was only minutes away, and the illuminated handsets of my rebreathers computer told me all was well. I stared upward straining to see some light. There was nothing, then faintly off to the left I could see something, not a light source, more like the texture of a rough surface, barnacles, I swam up to them and found an entrance. The bright spotlights on the rear deck of the Esperance Star were my salvation; they ‘just’ penetrated to the bottom, just enough light.

As I stepped onto the duckboard after nearly 2 hours inside the Etmor, the cook came up and said,’ I saved you some dinner’. It was good to be aboard, I looked around and saw that the troops were all happy watching a DVD and eating desert. I, of course, never said a word.

As I lay in my bunk that night I reflected on what had happened. I was fairly happy. I realized that whilst I had done plenty wrong, I had also done plenty right. I had managed a **** situation by thinking my way through it and by not panicking. I gave myself an uppercut, and then thought back to a few months earlier when I hadn’t been thinking too well, on a dive that should have been my last, a dive that made me think seriously about giving the whole thing away."
 
Deleted this post.
Could put a few people in a awkward situation.
 
Yes especially when the reports are actually concocted by those involved

Are you using this an example of an untrue story? And why this would be "concocted"? Just asking, I am curious.

Cheers
 
NO way, this is one to learn from but there's always a bit of concoction in recollection
 
No! You release past the mouthpiece for buoyancy or ppo2 adjustments

Trevor Jackson said, "I had a completely full Closed Circuit Rebreather, two full 125cft stage bottles, three reels and about 8 hours to get myself out before I ran out of gas."



But here it sounds like he was on bailout, possibly for the purpose of orientation

Trevor Jackson said, "The Etmor lies north-south, but I was so completely disorientated that on more than one occasion I had to feel for the direction of my exhaled bubbles to check if I was upright."
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

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