Never Again will I be unprepared!

[Hank Shackleford]

My nephew and I recently went diving in Cozumel with a well known but smaller outfit. I am posting both what went wrong and also the positives. First, I am not God's gift to the world of diving and as far as being an authority on diving I am not. What I am is a 25 year vacation diver who enjoys uneventful dives. I have had very few close to bad experiences. I have also had the benefit of diving with Dive Masters who were flat out under water drill instructors.

My nephew was experiencing his first ocean dive. A repair to my regulator was not finished in time for our trip so I used the dive shop's well worn equipment. This was my first and last time doing this. The equipment though used was functional. One unit only had a pressure gauge and the other had both a pressure gauge and a depth gauge. Neither had any timers or dive computers.

Each dive our exceptionally friendly and helpful Dive Master had to keep a close eye on our safety stop time which was started earlier than either of the other four divers we were diving with. The ascents were three groups of two. We did not ascend as a group any time during our week of diving.

This is were the week had the potential to go wrong. The Dive Master took us all spear fishing on the North end of Cozumel. The strong current combined with my nephew's inherent desire to succeed at spear fishing provided a challenge to me in keeping him and myself safe as I quickly realized our Dive Master was doing his level best to spear us as many fish, lobster and crab as he could. The Dive Master never saw us ascend. When we did ascend we were probably no less than sixty feet away from the Dive Master who later he told us he was unnerved when he looked around and didn't see us but felt better when he saw us performing a safety stop.

With no way to measure our safety stop time I estimated our time by counting my breaths when I counted 60 we went up. We came up with 500 and 700 PSI (mine). Yes, I was worried. Our maximum depth was 40 feet and our bottom time was about 40 minutes.

Thankfully I got my nephew home to his parents safe and sound. That was my job and I got it done though not perfectly at least without injury. He didn't realize how dangerous that dive was because I settled for less equipment than was needed at the outset of the dive and the Dive Master forgetting what his primary job is, diligently getting his clients in and out of the ocean safely. But ultimately the responsibility rests on the diver's shoulders.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

Glad to see you at least realized some of the truth at the end. You alone are responsible for your safety. Not the DM. The DM did his job. He found stuff for you all to kill and knew where to direct the recovery efforts had you screwed up. And you did screw up. You accepted inferior gear. Your responsibility. You dived without a timing device and way to accurately monitor your depth. Also your responsibility. You assumed responsibility for your nephew and then set a very poor example of diver responsibility. Before you go back in the water you should read more accident and incident reports. I'm betting you came close to.some bad stuff over the years but just don't realize how close. I really hope you conveyed to your nephew just how messed up this was and that he undertands and takes the necessary steps to see it does not happen again.

Sent from my DROID X2 using Tapatalk

 

[Brendon]

Ok, You don't have a computer fine. 1 depth gauge between the 2 of you, ok... You don't have the most fundamental tool in scuba diving called a watch...? Any problems that may have occurred would have been ur on fault. No computer, no watch- no right to be in the water...

 

[DandyDon]

Sorry to hear about your bad times, and thanks for sharing. I'm not going to criticize any of your opinions, but I want to share a few of mine along with some of my understandings...

I always take my own regs, 3 actually, counting my pony reg and my spare - but if you have to rent regs, check them out and make changes. Computers and dive watches are not included in reg rentals tho. My dive watch was $20 at Walmart and it's been below 100 ft with me many times, but computers are separate rentals if needed - or do you own one you could have taken?

I won't dive with an Op that insists on ascending as a group, altho I do like to ascend in buddy pairs. The DMs job is to lead the divers, not babysit them - unless you hire a private one. Otherwise, dive your plan and take care of yourselves.

Hope your next trip is better.

 

[TSandM]

You and your nephew are both certified divers, right? As such, you ought to be competent to do a descent, dive, and ascent as a buddy pair. This will require a depth measuring device, and a timer. If you agreed to go into the water without that minimum equipment, then really, what complaint do you have of the dive op or DM?

I have done a few dives with inadequate equipment myself. I have gotten to a dive site without my computer. I agreed to do the dive anyway . . . but I had evaluated the situation and knew that I knew the site well enough to know, within a couple feet, how deep I was at any point. I also know the dive we did well enough to know roughly how much TIME it would take us to get to various points. And I had a buddy with a Liquivision computer that I could read from ten feet away, to cross-check my internal clock. Had anything gone wrong on that dive, I would have had no one but myself to blame for it.

I think the lesson here is that, if you are going to rent equipment, find out from the dive op what they have available. If you need a depth gauge or computer, make sure one is available. Do not do a dive with less than what you deem the minimum equipment necessary to do the dive safely. Do not depend on the dive guide to provide functionality that your own team can't provide for itself.

 

[Doubler]

Maybe this is just me but you seem to be worried about the wrong thing. You state you had no way to know how long to make your non mandatory optional three minute safety stop. Wrong thing to be worrying about, even now. What I would care about is that with out a timer or depth gauge how do you know you didn't miss a mandatory decompression stop? How do you plan your correct SIT time? How do you determine second dive no decompression depths and times? Did you have a set of tables with you as you did not have a computer? Count yourself lucky you didn't get yourself and your nephew bent?

 

[DandyDon]

Well, he did say he wasn't going unprepared again.

This one is $18 Walmart.com: Armitron Men's Digital Sport Watch With Alarm: Watches

 

[Bubbletrubble]

Thanks for sharing your story, Hank Shackleford. Glad that everyone returned safely from the dive.

I have to agree with Doubler. So much consternation about timing a safety stop is really not seeing the forest for the trees.

Others have already mentioned the issue of abdicating responsibility for a diver's safety to the DM, so I won't discuss it.

I'm not sure why the OP complained about the rental equipment. The regs were reported to function properly. The SPGs were in working order. One depth gauge for two divers is far from ideal...but, so long as the divers stay very close throughout the entire dive (which isn't a given in many buddy teams), then I guess it could work in a pinch. He seems to imply that his own reg setup has a depth gauge and/or dive computer connected to it. If that's the case, why wasn't the gauge/computer separated from the reg and taken on the dive vacation? With respect to the rental, he could have called/emailed ahead to ensure that either a timing device or a dive computer was available on location. If neither was available, then he could have bought a $15 Timex Ironman watch at Walmart prior to the trip. Many people already own water-resistant watches that would be OK to use (without UW button-pushes) on a scuba dive. Combined with a dive slate, depth gauge, and dive tables, that would be sufficient.

I'm concerned about whether the OP and his nephew were using dive tables. There was no mention of it in the first post. Perhaps it was an accidental omission.

How experienced is the OP's nephew? First dive in the ocean implies a certain amount of inexperience. I suppose it's possible that he had conducted many dives in a lake or quarry. If the nephew was very inexperienced and/or was just certified, I have to question the wisdom of taking him spearfishing on scuba. That's extreme task-loading for an inexperienced diver even in the best of circumstances (known dive site, familiar dive conditions, no current, familiar gear, competent buddy team, attentive/competent DM). Combined that with inadequate gear (lack of timing device) to conduct the dive safely, that's not very good.

I'm curious what kind of post-dive discussions took place between the OP and his nephew.
Hopefully the pertinent topics were discussed.

On a side note...not sure where the OP was diving, but it's really hard for me to think of a dive destination where some sort of water-resistant timing device could not be obtained.

 

[redacted]

Most other points have been covered. The worst time to have your kit serviced is just before a dive trip. You ran into the issue of getting it back in time. That allowed you to miss the issue of service errors resulting in increased failure rates immediately following service.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

AWAP has a very good point!

I started selling regs in March of this year. While the recommended rebuild is every two on the brand I sell there is a recommended annual inspection. For those who are diving their gear regularly this is a good time to catch those little issues before they become big ones. For those who do not use theirs a lot it's a good time to make sure the seats have not taken a set, that exhaust diaphragms are not sealed shut because you may not have rinsed it good enough after that last dive and to just check IP's and cracking pressures. I'll start sending out reminders in January for people to get this done if they are going to. While I have fast turn arounds usually, I also work another job and may do some traveling of my own so waiting til the last week or even two before a trip is not smart when dealing with any shop really.

I like to see people send things in 3 weeks to a month before they need it just to be safe. I also do some service work for friends and might need the extra time to get a kit if they don't bring it in with the reg. There is one shop in my area that takes as much as two months for a service as they get swamped and only have one tech right before the season really kicks off. Been like this for years but the same people still insist on bringing regs in the week before they are leaving. If they would bring their regs in, say in January or February, they could get them back in a week in some cases.