Colder Water Isn't Just Colder Water

[Raystafarian]

I’m not here to blame anyone. Except myself. Have around 24 hours bottom time all with the same buddy.

We’ve never dove colder water before, we’re from FL and our coldest dive before yesterday was 68°F at deepest. Our average bottom temp was 78°F. We’ve always dove 3mm suits and boots.

In preparation for this dive we got some 7mm suits and hoods, gotta be warm right? To say the least, they were alien to us. Also alien to us is the amount of weight needed to dive with that kind of gear on. I use ~3lbs (+ 5lb BP) salt water in my 3mm so I loaded up 14lbs (+5lb BP) and thought I’d do a weight check.

Dive site – Hayama Beach, Gontaro Rock. We were briefed on the site prior to the dive and we weren’t diving alone (+4 party). 200m walk, 50m surface swim at 210°. Dive on the 120° across the site and return on 60°. Surface temp 58°F. The four others were diving dry.

Where did I go wrong?

1. 200m walk meant we didn’t have anywhere to do a weight check and thought we’d be OK
   
2. 200m walk with gear is rough. Rougher carrying 11 extra lbs. Roughest over slick rock, not pretty sandy bottom.
   
3. We went out around low tide and knew the tide would rise, but had never seen the site at high tide.
   
4. A hood can affect the seal of your mask, apparently?
   
5. Can my wing handle this weight? Why didn’t this even cross my mind?

What happened?

The walk had me exhausted before the surface swim. I couldn’t descend without weight. My buddy could, but couldn’t clear properly so after an amount of time, we thumbed the dive and headed back. Back should be 30°. That’s on the surface for us, which means we can’t see the rock that was out of the water before, but under the water now. So we took 30° and knew we were headed toward a tree which is where we started. But that didn’t go as planned. The tide coming in, plus our disjointed course had us tumbling over the rocks we didn’t know were there. Once it was shallow enough we doffed our fins and tried to walk it, but the sea wouldn’t allow that. Every time we get thrown down I’m lucky I don’t have any real injuries, but the surge isn’t sending my buddy and I over each rock formation at the same time, so I’m terrified she’ll hit her head.

It was probably a 40 minute struggle over about 100m of slippery rock and surge with like 400% more weight than normal, in water that was colder than we’re used to. It was just as dumb and scary as it sounds. My mask was full of water and the rocks kept knocking out my regulator or the waves went up over the snorkel as we surfed the rocks. I ended up ditching my weight (but not losing it) and was damn near ditching everything else.

Eventually we made it to a rock that we could rest at and could see the rock “beach” we were supposed to be at around 20m away. It was only a walk over knee deep water on slippery rocks, but I had absolutely no energy left. It took us four trips between the locations to get all of our gear from the one place to the other. When we got to the rock beach, we dropped it all and went another 20m to the stair entrance so we could get some water. Took us maybe another hour to go back out and get everything back up the stairs.

Yay, we didn’t lose anything, injure ourselves seriously or die. I’m sore as hell today with bruises all over and at some point I must have hit something sharp because it put a hole in my wetsuit. It would have cut me pretty bad if that was my 3mm suit.

What did I learn?

1. Even with an underwater map of a site, I still don’t know how to navigate it.
   
2. I shouldn’t have dived without a weight check, so I shouldn’t have dived.
   
3. New gear is new gear, which wouldn’t be a problem if I checked to make sure the old gear (wing) could handle it.
   
4. Cold water is different, not because I was cold, but because I couldn’t handle the weight. I was too tired to dive from the walk before we were even at the surface swim. I should have thumbed it right there.
   
5. Thumbing a dive is OK. It’s always been OK. The site isn’t going anywhere.
   
6. The entire situation can get out of control before you even realize the position you’ve put yourself in.
   
7. We’re incredibly lucky we walked off that beach. Especially without losing any gear, limbs or consciousness

Bonus lesson – If you substitute some rocks for weight because you’re too light, don’t forget you did that. I mean, I’d say don’t ever do that, but that’s the rule for me. Do whatever you’re comfortable with.

Maybe I should be embarrassed about this, but I'm not. I just feel very foolish and hope nobody else is foolish like me.

 

[Landau]

Thanks for posting. This type of post helps us all learn.

At home for me the water is always around 8C / 46F so I’m used to cold and tropical diving seems easy without drysuit, undergarments, gloves, hood, booties less weight etc. Still on my last trip to the tropics (Blackbeard’s liveaboard) I dove without my camera on the first dive just to get used to diving without all the extra gear.

 

[grf88]

From your description the fact that the water was colder than you were used to seems to be only a minor factor. I regularly dive in much colder water, often less than 40 degrees, and think I would have had problems in the conditions you describe.

 

[lowflyer]

Lot of lessons there.
One simple one is: when wearing a hood you need to pull the hood edges away from the mask so the mask isn't overriding the hood material. Doing that you won't have a leaking mask, which was one of your problems.

 

[Dogbowl]

I had a similar experience diving colder water the first time in Tobermory, Canada. Mind you, my conditions were nowhere near as rough as yours. Even so, we will now always hire a professional to guide us in new conditions. Glad you made it out relatively intact.

 

[Neilwood]

I’m not here to blame anyone. Except myself. Have around 24 hours bottom time all with the same buddy.

We’ve never dove colder water before, we’re from FL and our coldest dive before yesterday was 68°F at deepest. Our average bottom temp was 78°F. We’ve always dove 3mm suits and boots.

In preparation for this dive we got some 7mm suits and hoods, gotta be warm right? To say the least, they were alien to us. Also alien to us is the amount of weight needed to dive with that kind of gear on. I use ~3lbs (+ 5lb BP) salt water in my 3mm so I loaded up 14lbs (+5lb BP) and thought I’d do a weight check.

Dive site – Hayama Beach, Gontaro Rock. We were briefed on the site prior to the dive and we weren’t diving alone (+4 party). 200m walk, 50m surface swim at 210°. Dive on the 120° across the site and return on 60°. Surface temp 58°F. The four others were diving dry.

Where did I go wrong?

1. 200m walk meant we didn’t have anywhere to do a weight check and thought we’d be OK
   
2. 200m walk with gear is rough. Rougher carrying 11 extra lbs. Roughest over slick rock, not pretty sandy bottom.
   
3. We went out around low tide and knew the tide would rise, but had never seen the site at high tide.
   
4. A hood can affect the seal of your mask, apparently?
   
5. Can my wing handle this weight? Why didn’t this even cross my mind?

What happened?

The walk had me exhausted before the surface swim. I couldn’t descend without weight. My buddy could, but couldn’t clear properly so after an amount of time, we thumbed the dive and headed back. Back should be 30°. That’s on the surface for us, which means we can’t see the rock that was out of the water before, but under the water now. So we took 30° and knew we were headed toward a tree which is where we started. But that didn’t go as planned. The tide coming in, plus our disjointed course had us tumbling over the rocks we didn’t know were there. Once it was shallow enough we doffed our fins and tried to walk it, but the sea wouldn’t allow that. Every time we get thrown down I’m lucky I don’t have any real injuries, but the surge isn’t sending my buddy and I over each rock formation at the same time, so I’m terrified she’ll hit her head.

It was probably a 40 minute struggle over about 100m of slippery rock and surge with like 400% more weight than normal, in water that was colder than we’re used to. It was just as dumb and scary as it sounds. My mask was full of water and the rocks kept knocking out my regulator or the waves went up over the snorkel as we surfed the rocks. I ended up ditching my weight (but not losing it) and was damn near ditching everything else.

Eventually we made it to a rock that we could rest at and could see the rock “beach” we were supposed to be at around 20m away. It was only a walk over knee deep water on slippery rocks, but I had absolutely no energy left. It took us four trips between the locations to get all of our gear from the one place to the other. When we got to the rock beach, we dropped it all and went another 20m to the stair entrance so we could get some water. Took us maybe another hour to go back out and get everything back up the stairs.

Yay, we didn’t lose anything, injure ourselves seriously or die. I’m sore as hell today with bruises all over and at some point I must have hit something sharp because it put a hole in my wetsuit. It would have cut me pretty bad if that was my 3mm suit.

What did I learn?

1. Even with an underwater map of a site, I still don’t know how to navigate it.
   
2. I shouldn’t have dived without a weight check, so I shouldn’t have dived.
   
3. New gear is new gear, which wouldn’t be a problem if I checked to make sure the old gear (wing) could handle it.
   
4. Cold water is different, not because I was cold, but because I couldn’t handle the weight. I was too tired to dive from the walk before we were even at the surface swim. I should have thumbed it right there.
   
5. Thumbing a dive is OK. It’s always been OK. The site isn’t going anywhere.
   
6. The entire situation can get out of control before you even realize the position you’ve put yourself in.
   
7. We’re incredibly lucky we walked off that beach. Especially without losing any gear, limbs or consciousness

Bonus lesson – If you substitute some rocks for weight because you’re too light, don’t forget you did that. I mean, I’d say don’t ever do that, but that’s the rule for me. Do whatever you’re comfortable with.

Maybe I should be embarrassed about this, but I'm not. I just feel very foolish and hope nobody else is foolish like me.

Diving with a thick wetsuit or drysuit requires a lot more attention than a thin suit. There is more of a buoyancy swing so you need to be on top of it (small adjustments to BCD volume - don't wait until you are out of control). The only way to know what weight you need is to do a proper weight check - pre dive with full tank and no air in the BCD you should be at approx eye level with lungs half full (rising on inhalation and dropping on exhalation).
Another take away would be try to add only one new thing at a time if possible. You did a new site and new gear without adequate preparation. A better plan would have been to find a sheltered site to get used to the new gear, do a proper weight check with your new gear (a nice easy safe site) and then add in the new dive site once you are happy with the gear.

 

[DanBMW]

Thanks for writing and telling what happened. Lots of things to be learned, but one important that I'd like to mention and that is the saving of your weights and gear. Weights are cheap and when it's time to call the dive because of danger, get ride of them immediately. Too many have died wearing lead. Second. Gear can be replaced. Can you? Ditch the gear in an emergency.

Numerous mistakes were made. Don't compound them by trying to save your gear and dying.

 

[icechip]

Diving colder waters in thicker mm suits is a challenge, it took me quite a few dives to reconfigure proper weighting, weight positioning, etc as well as doing simple/regular things with thicker gloves on. Hope you stick with colder water diving and I appreciate your analysis of your experience.

 

[peeweediver]

Big kudos for your post. Though you feel like you should accept the "blame", don't be too hard on yourself. At some point, most divers have been narrowly focused on doing a particular dive and didn't properly add up all that was new or troublesome for them before hitting the water. Though I have to dive cold water to teach and to enjoy our lake, I hate the added weight, restrictions from the suit (wet or dry), wearing a hood, dry gloves, etc. You tried all of that on at once along with having to deal with the conditions and navigation. Congrats for calling the dive and resting to make sure you got back safe. This SB site is best when people post honest events for all to learn and, on this specific site, nobody dies. Those of us that teach can use these experiences to add context to our "stories" to the students. Thanks very much for that.
Rob

 

[Bob DBF]

It just proves that lessons are always paid for, one way or another.

Anytime I dive a new site I freedive it first. I can insure my weight is right which is not usually an issue because I normally dive cold water. Then I can check out the entrance, the dive site and exit without the weight and bulk of dive gear. If the dive site turns out to be more challenging than I first thought, the exit will be easier than if I had to keep track of SCUBA gear.

What I've found out over the years is that the exit is the most important part of the dive, especially a shore dive, you may very well be returning cold, tired, and to different conditions. You need to be ready to show your A game.

And a trick I learned is to swim in. I can float in 6" or so of water in a 7mm with gear that is streamlined so it dosent snag. I let the surge push me in around rocks and slide over others, as you found out standing up is hard to do on slimy rocks and kelp so the closer you are to dry land before you stand the better. And I've never been above crawling out of the water, it's not pretty but it beats falling.

This thread discusses the overall issue you ran into.
Limits: what they are, why they are important and how to establish them


Bob