Have You Had an Unexpected Ascent?

[jonnythan]

Last week, I was about 40 feet down in the Hudson River near Hadley, and I found a Razor-type scooter. I didn't have a lift bag so I decided to drag it to the surface.. it was only a few pounds negative. I grabbed it and my buddy and I started our ascent.. at about 20 feet I dropped it, and started zipping upward.. my pull dump kept me from reaching the surface, but it was kinda scary. Went back down to 20 for my safety stop.

 

[boydski]

I had an out-of-air diver that was breathing off of my primary drag me to the surface despite my best efforts to control the ascent. I found it difficult to get to the BC dumps of the other diver ( that was panicked ) in time to do much more that slow the ascent. This was from about 40' and I was most unhappy about the situation.

Since then, I have made the other diver practice, practice, parctice so they no longer panic and remain calm when sharing air ( it was a relative or I would have been tempted to just let the diver go ).

Boydski

 

[SM Diver]

Man, it's bad enough that your relative ran out of air, but to not even manage his/her bcd on the way up is realllly bad.

I sit with a friend at rotary who has had unexpected rapid ascents on two seperate occassions. He described it as pure horror with so many thoughts as your rocketing up you're not sure what to do. Personally, I have not had an unexpected rapid ascent, although on one of my last dives I did get a slow warning from my dive computer. I had taken my eyes off the computer for a few seconds and that was all it took. Looked at the dive graph on my PC that night, and it looks like I sailed 13 feet real quick, from about 50 feet to 37. When I looked back at my computer I dumped air and then made an extra slow ascent the rest of the way, and took what was now a mandatory safety stop for the rapid ascent.

The lesson for me: Never take your eyes off your computer during your ascent.

 

[Northeastwrecks]

Boat dive off Rhode Island. I'm the third wheel in a husband/wife buddy team. Pure recreational dive, so no problem that I'm not diving with my usual buddies (Yeah, right)

My buddies claimed that they were both divemasters. They also claimed to have performed a buddy check on each other.

A couple of minutes after reaching the wreck (72 ft), the wife suddenly grabs her husband's octo. She signals to me that she is out of air and tries to climb to the surface. We hold her down and signal her to calm down.

She rejects hubby's octo, lets go of hubby and grabs my primary and tries to climb me on her way to the surface. I duck my head, grab my backup, recover my mask and come around behind her (she still has my primary and is breathing well). After controlling her, I shoot a bag and signal to husband that we are ascending.

We are making a normal (30 fpm) horizontal ascent (me on wife's back and using her gear to ascend) with no problems when husband, who had been doing a vertical ascent, grabs her BC and hits his inflator. He pushes me off of her. I grabbed both BC's, flared out, dumped everything and went for a ride.

After the usual antics on the surface, we got her onto the boat and on Oxygen as a preventative measure. I sucked down my hang bottle. In the end, everyone was fine.

Upon further review, it turned out that she had not opened her valve completely. It stopped working at depth.

When I asked her hubby what his F*^%$## problem was, he told me that I was taking too long, that we were off the anchor line and that we would have run out of air at the rate I was ascending because two people were using my tank (HP 120 with about 2800 psi remaining at the time we started our ascent, along with a hang bottle of 50% that I was evaluating).

Finally, although they were divemasters, it turns out that they hadn't been in the water for several months.

Everyone was fine. However, I was worried that I had completely blown my profile, so it cost me the other dives that I had planned for that day. I stayed out of the water for the rest of the weekend.

 

[Bob3]

Diving in the Mississippi River during flood stage, it's not uncommon to have your hose get grabbed by a passing tree.
It can get a bit uncomfortable if your ears don't clear fast enough after you tear loose & drop back to the bottom.

 

[Joe R.]

Once I shot a bag at 70'. The mistake was in not having the current at my back...A MUST! The string caught my regulator and I was pulled up. While I exhaled for the ride up, survived, and then quickly got back down to my 50' hang. So 'do not shoot a lift bag unless the current IS coming from behind'. This pushes the string away.

 

[sig]

Nice to see this thread. I've noticed that there are mentions of accidents in the diving community but never many on divers on this board. I collect knives and find it very common for the knife forums to mention some stupid accident they have had. I find it good to hear of these kind of mishaps as it keeps the rest of us from becoming complacent.

I have had one accent that was unexpected when I first started diving I was on my first night dive. My friend was helping me with a light and instead of paying attention to are depth we found ourselves at the surface. Luckily we were at only about 20ft and we didn't accend to fast but it caught both of us by surprise..

 

[DameDykker]

happende to me once. I started to dive dry at some 15 m - no problems. Then afterwords at shallow dives a combination of too little weight, bulky under suit and empty tank I had problems venting air and ascended too quick from 4-5 m. No harm done! And now I wear more weights.

 

[Stone]

Occationally I have to move my anchor away from bottom structure. I accomplish this by grabbing the anchor and inflating my BC. Even though I repeat to myself "Dump air first", I have dropped the anchor first. It takes about 15 feet to (say "dammit"), grab the inflator, roll shoulder high, and dump the air.

 

[MNScuba]

We were at 100 feet doing our AOW dives and my reg started freeflowing, after trying to adjust it with no avail my instructor handed me his primary and we began to ascend... Just as we began to ascend his alternate started freeflowing, well.... we're on our way up at this point and he had to reach for his pony bottle and before we knew it we were both ascending rapidly to the surface... We went back down and did our 5 minutes safety stop and ended the remaining dives for the day. We'll be going back to do the deep and one elective dive on Labor Day.

Had the reg checked out and it's all good... ready for round 2! This time I will be more aware of what can happen and be prepared to release air from my bc.

What did I learn?

1
Once his alternate started freeflowing I should have grabbed my primary and breathed off of it and attempted a normal ascent (if wasn't freeflowing bad, so breathing off of it would have been easy).

2
Adjust the reg prior to making the descent, not once it starts to freeflow.

3
You ascend pretty darn fast when you aren't purging air from your bc! Among other things, I thank God I didn't have a reverse block!

4
I'm going to swap out my Air2 for an Octo and get a 7' hose for my primary. If I was in my instructors position during this, I would not have had a long enough hose and would have lost my buddy while ascending since I would have donated my primary which is on about a 3' hose. Currently looking at using my SP mk16/g250hp for my Octo and purchasing a SP mk20 or 25/s600 for my primary.