Major screw up-mostly my fault

[Riger]

My wife and I had just completed our OW course and were doing our first guided night dive, nothing strenuous, 15-20m no current, maybe 35 min into the dive, I am at 60 Bar, I get to the guide show him I am at 60 Bar, he OK's me and carries on.

I show my wife that he is crazy and ask her if she is OK to break from the group and do an ascent with me. She is good with that and we do a challenging safety stop in the dark, face to face both monitoring depth etc...

That was the best thing that ever happened to us, we established a degree of independence and never looked back.

The advice regarding you making a call for you (and your buddy) is good, at the end of the day, if you are dead, it does not matter who gets the blame, you stay dead. The most valuable lesson I have learnt in my short (47 dives) diving life is taking responsibility for me (and my buddy).

Glad you are still with us to tell the story.

Best Regards
Richard

 

[Gombessa]

Wait a minute. Does an upside-down reg prevent you from clearing or breathing? I've swam "turtled" before and have never run into any issues with the reg - if anything it breaths better because you're not blowing bubbles into yourself on exhale. Sounds to me like the buddy's octo was malfunctioning?

 

[Ber Rabbit]

Some regs will re-flood when you put them in your mouth upside down and try to clear them. We have 22 sets of gear at the university, all the same make/model. Sometimes they refill when you try to clear them upside down sometimes they don't.

Take your reg out, flip it upside down then put it in your mouth and try to clear it with the exhaust T pointing up to see what yours does.
Ber :lilbunny:

 

[Web Monkey]

Wait a minute. Does an upside-down reg prevent you from clearing or breathing? I've swam "turtled" before and have never run into any issues with the reg - if anything it breaths better because you're not blowing bubbles into yourself on exhale. Sounds to me like the buddy's octo was malfunctioning?

That's entirely possible. A lot of octos are in really bad shape. Or it could just be a really wet breather when upside down.

Although the issue has been beaten to death here several times, one of the great things about teaching students to donate the primary is that it tends to get people to pay attention to their backup, since they'll be breathing it while sharing.

Nothing encourages having a good reg like knowing that in an emergency, you'll be breathing with it.

Terry

 

[ClayJar]

As Ber said, some regs will re-flood and some won't. Even with the best-sealing reg that won't let any new water in, however, you run into a problem of physics: Water is heavier than air. (Yeah, I know it's obvious. :biggrin

What does that mean? Quite simply, even if you're blowing your tonsils through the reg or purging a veritable hurricane of bubbles through it, if the exhaust opening is on the top (gravitationally speaking), you're not going to get all the water out. Depending on the design of the reg, you may end up with quite a bit of water remaining in the reg body, even with no new water entering the reg. With the exhaust on the bottom, blowing or purging air into the reg works as it should.

(Of course, if the exhaust valves or diaphragm are damaged, inhaling will give you a nice mouthful of water regardless of how well you cleared the reg. You can handle that in an emergency by "manually" working the reg, i.e. pressing the purge button as you inhale. Still, it's obviously far better to discover the situation at the surface or start of the dive. Pressing the purge does not tell you whether the reg is working -- a damaged exhaust valve or diaphragm will not stop the purge from working, but it will mean you'll get a big breath of water instead of air if you try to breathe the reg underwater.)

 

[Gombessa]

I use an identical second stage for my backup and my primary, so every so often I'll swap them. Just crank up the cracking pressure and my primary becomes my backup

 

[TSandM]

As far as the asthma goes, although I'm unable to do a history and physical over the internet, if you are as active in sports as you describe with no discernible symptoms, it's highly unlikely that you have asthma that would impede your diving.

 

[Thalassamania]

Lots of good arguments in this thread for surrendering the primary.

 

[RJP]

Being a new diver, I blindly followed the instructor instead of doing what I know to do. I will never do that again.

My OW instructor would purposely give us dive parameters for a "no go" dive to see if we would still dutifully plan and execute a "trust me" dive even if it was too deep, too long, or whatever. Then, right as we were getting into the water he'd say "Hey, wait a minute..."



Was a good lesson.

 

[DRsharky]

Good to hear that you are cleared by the doctors, so go and dive, but make sure you choose a better dive buddy!!!
I think the biggest problem was luck of communication before and during the dive. Also agree with TSandM that the instructor should take better care of you even though you are certified diver (I am assuming that he was the one who certified you and knew you are a new diver).