Cautionary tale for new divers

[Marie13]

Now that the details have been posted, I’ll add here: diver had publicly posted on FB in response to my question about practice with the pony at the quarry (he had posted a question about weighting) that he was going to practice with it in a friend’s backyard swimming pool the day before the dives on the 130ft wreck. It was very clear he considered that sufficient. He seemed more concerned about his weighting with the pony than actually practicing with it.

 

[Geobound]

As a newly certified diver my only comment would be, that I hope to have a friend like Marie who can tell me when I'm moving too quickly or doing something outside of my experience.

Ya I'm sure we all want to push the envelope at some point, and in small increments maybe thats not a bad thing, but having the experience of others isn't something I'd ignore.

The reality of it is that this diver is not only putting himself in jeopardy, but also his dive buddy........who may be an unwitting party to his reckless nature.

Thanks for the post and your concern for others Marie.

 

[lowflyer]

As an experiment, I once stopped air flow to a reg by crimping the hose. If I had a free flow at depth and fiddling with the reg didn't cure the problem and no one was close to help, I'd crimp the hose and breath the secondary. I could then also release some crimp on the primary to see if that solved the free flow.

 

[Marie13]

As a newly certified diver my only comment would be, that I hope to have a friend like Marie who can tell me when I'm moving too quickly or doing something outside of my experience.

Ya I'm sure we all want to push the envelope at some point, and in small increments maybe thats not a bad thing, but having the experience of others isn't something I'd ignore.

The reality of it is that this diver is not only putting himself in jeopardy, but also his dive buddy........who may be an unwitting party to his reckless nature.

Thanks for the post and your concern for others Marie.

I started this thread to make new divers THINK. I wanted to put a bug in someone’s brain that might prove fruitful at some time.

I finally got a message in response from the diver in question to my FB message from Sunday, taking about the 130ft dive and the tech dives he wants to do. He thanked me for my concern and assured me he would never do anything he couldn’t handle. He also said perhaps he is somewhat pushing the boundaries, but he’s always done that.

I responded that that the 145ft wreck is a tech dive. Period. I mentioned someone we both know who only does that wreck on Trimix. I told the guy that it’s a goal for after AN/DP, not for “next year” when you’ve got 25 dives and no apparent plans for additional training. I wrote, “You’re not pushing boundaries by yourself. You screw up, and you’re going to f*** with the diving of others on the boat, not to mention the captain and crew.” No response to that, of course!

No mention of the free flow/OOA incident from the weekend as he doesn’t know I know about it and I wasn’t going to bring it up. Wanted to get a response from him without that coloring it. Wow. Guy just has no idea how badly the OOA incident could have gone. Probably because it turned out so well.

I will not be instabuddying at all with him on the boat. I don’t care what sort of problems it causes. No way, no how!

 

[dewdropsonrosa]

As an experiment, I once stopped air flow to a reg by crimping the hose. If I had a free flow at depth and fiddling with the reg didn't cure the problem and no one was close to help, I'd crimp the hose and breath the secondary. I could then also release some crimp on the primary to see if that solved the free flow.

Does anyone know if this will work with a braided hose, since they're designed to be hard to crimp?

 

[Jack Hammer]

Does anyone know if this will work with a braided hose, since they're designed to be hard to crimp?

It works super easy, pull a loop tight and it will crimp

 

[Charles2]

Too bad that the diver we are talking about hasn't been able to defend himself.....or learn from this.