Scary OW certification weekend

[jar546]

Not to divert just a little but I am familiar with an SSI dive shop that does turn off the student's air before they do an ascent then turns it back on during ascent. is this standard practice?

 

[hypertech]

No the air was not turned off cause i remember still seeing a bunch of bubbles coming out of it during the 3 minute safety stop. There really wasnt alot of air left in the tank after performing the 7 skills and starting the tour so once the leak started it really didnt have alot left to lose. Once we got back to our table i looked at what was left, and was in fact reading 0psi left.

---------- Post added ----------

If the guage came off the tank, it would read 0 even if there was 3k in the tank.

 

[jaycanwk]

Maybe some mistakes were made by the instuctor by letting me continue but i appreciate how he went out of his way to help me complete it. He knew i was pursuing a life long time dream of mine, and just how important this was to me. That i had a diving trip to Little Corn Island all planned out for October, and how bummed out i would be if i couldnt dive. I think he was trying to be nice by letting me try to complete the rest of the skills i had left. he didnt want to deny me my dream! He really did everything he could to make the remaining skills as easy for me to perform as possible. He removed my weights, and loosened up by bc after he calmed me down, and i stopped hypervenilating for the second time. He even snorkeled the rest of the way around the hole with me. He made the buddy tows as easy as possible as well by gently kicking for 2 of the tows as i went, and only making me tow him a short distance. He also helped me complete the equipment removal at the surface skill by keeping me calm and breathing normaly. I really wanted to join the rest of the class in their graduation dive down to the bottom but he refused to let me go with them. I think he was an awesome intructor that i learned a great deal from. I also think he is an awesome man, who went out of his way to get me to do what needed to be done so i could realize my dream. I in no way wanted my narrative of my weekend to cast him in a negative light!

Here is the thing I'm concerned about. Like most people new to diving, you don't know what you don't know, as they say. The way your Insructor handled the whole situation that day was seriously incompetent and legally negligent at worst if everything was really exactly as you described. We of course don't have his side of the story so I'm going to reserve my judgment, but you should not have been allowed back into the water after presenting symptoms of lung trauma and panic.

I most certainly hope you do realize your dream of diving, but for the love of god, you don't have to die trying. I would recomend you work with another instructor to get some more practice and to help resolve your panic issues.

 

[darushin]

Does anybody else think this story doesn't quite ring true?

To begin with, a HP hose leak can't empty a tank the way the OP describes. HP hose leaks leak very little volume. If the OP had 500 psi when he saw the leak, and came up on someone else's gas, he wouldn't have had an empty tank at the surface. Look at Curt Bowen's numbers on leak rates: Life Ending Seconds • ADVANCED DIVER MAGAZINE • By Curt Bowen An HP orifice leak emptied about .9 cf/min; if the OP was an on Al80 with 500 psi, he had about 12.5 cf in his tank, and therefore had at least 13 or more minutes before the tank would have been empty from the leak.

And as bad as I think dive instruction can be, I simply cannot imagine an instructor being callous enough to ignore a student who a) panicked; b) did an uncontrolled ascent, and c) ended up on the surface coughing up pink foam. This sounds like a case of immersion pulmonary edema, causing dyspnea at depth, but it could conceivably be pulmonary barotrauma. I have seen instructors abort a dive and refuse to allow a student back in the water for a nosebleed. I have a difficult time imagining an instructor allowing a student who had to be placed on oxygen to reenter the water.

Something just doesn't smell right here.

I can say that if the failure was the spg, then it can empty quick. I have personally witness a spg blow and drain a tank in about 30 secs. Maybe that is what the op meant.

Daru

 

[Quero]

...why would an instructor certify someone who panicked so easily? This person should be put back in the pool for more work before they can be certified IMO.

I think he was an awesome intructor that i learned a great deal from. I also think he is an awesome man, who went out of his way to get me to do what needed to be done so i could realize my dream. I in no way wanted my narrative of my weekend to cast him in a negative light!

I said maybe he didnt want to deny me my dream of diving just to defend him cause i think hes a great guy, and im grateful to him. I can try and defend the intructors choice to let me continue, but honestly i dont know why he made the choice he did.

I wish we could get that instructor to come into this thread and tell us what happened from his perspective. Or have his "friend" report for him so that he doesn't get directly identified in any way.

 

[doctormike]

I can say that if the failure was the spg, then it can empty quick. I have personally witness a spg blow and drain a tank in about 30 secs. Maybe that is what the op meant.

Daru

Not sure what you witnessed, but a leak from the HP port (which is what the SPG connects to) cannot drain a tank nearly as fast as a blown low pressure hose. In fact, that article cited above gives some actual numbers for the time to drain an 80 CUF cylinder with 3000 psi: 83 seconds for an LP hose failure, 72 seconds for a failed burst disk, about 4 minutes for a free flowing second stage (at the surface, quicker at depth since the second stage supplies gas at ambient pressure), and 22 minutes for a blown HP hose.

This is because the HP port has a tiny orifice, since it doesn't need to actually deliver gas flow (like the LP ports). It just transmits pressure to the SPG for a reading. It wouldn't matter if the HP leak was from a blown SPG, a burst hose, a hose cut with a pair of trauma shears, or just from removing a plug, the effect would be the same.

 

[CamG]

Hello again nimoh I edited my post to the original "not" sticking to standards.
Sorry must have missed it this morning.
There has been some really good dialog from this thread about the medical side of this.
When I went through OW our instructor made very sure we all understood the hazards and standards of the training.

We were encouraged to question and continue to do so till we understood clearly.
In the two years I assisted with training we only had one incident.
Hopefully all OW students and or divers who read this thread will learn to be very careful.

CamG Keep Diving....Keep Training....Keep Learning!

 

[nimoh]

Hello again nimoh I edited my post to the original "not" sticking to standards.
Sorry must have missed it this morning.
There has been some really good dialog from this thread about the medical side of this.
When I went through OW our instructor made very sure we all understood the hazards and standards of the training.

We were encouraged to question and continue to do so till we understood clearly.
In the two years I assisted with training we only had one incident.
Hopefully all OW students and or divers who read this thread will learn to be very careful.

CamG Keep Diving....Keep Training....Keep Learning!

no problem, like I said, it wasn't your wording, but my interpretation caught me by surprise

 

[FlamboyantDiver]

OP glad you are okay. I bet this thread is even more traumatic for you than the OW experience, lol. From one newbie to another - hang in there but be safe!

 

[Malpaso]

I have far more medical experience than diving experience, so I won't comment on the training or the instructor. What I will say is Get A Second Medical Opinion before you dive again, and, join DAN.