When the "stuff" hits the fan?

[Rhone Man]

The trouble with sh** hitting the fan is (1) it is usually something that you are completely unprepared for - you can mitigate this with drills, but it is quite hard to plan for the unexpected, and (2) like the Titanic, every disaster usually involves a combination of more than one thing going wrong, and at least one or two bad decisions along the way.

We all know that you are not supposed to dive with a head cold. Or with a bit of gear held together by duct tape. Or using borrowed gear that doesn't fit well. Or ... etc. But we all do it from time to time.

Drills and skills are great. But ultimately accidents don't happen in the classroom, and they rarely happen as planned in textbooks. As Lynne says, mental agility and an ability to keep calm in the face of difficulties are pretty crucial when encountering something unplanned.

 

[4sak3n]

I love that flow chart Bob! It strikes just the right balance between humour and levity whilst clearly showing what I take many, many sentences to explain to my students. Would you object strenuously if I were to use it in my courses?

 

[IDMike]

Had my first situation yesterday at an Underwater Easter Egg Hunt. I dove to 11ft to grab an egg off the bottom when suddenly my primary regulator started free flowing, I lost visibility, and panicked a little. I couldn't get it to stop, but I still had 2500psi, I understood that I could breathe and ascend but I couldn't see, my ascent was too fast and I did not like the state of mind I was in.

Overall the thought process was there but the pacing was all wrong and I wasn't sure enough of my ability to handle the situation. I'm not entirely sure I could have calmed myself down and avoided injury at any significant depth. I've been on 8 dives before this one (counting my 5 SD certification dives), so I know it's a matter of needing practice on my part but wow when anything goes wrong it really goes fast. Thanks for this thread. It's great to see people at a much higher level than myself still practicing safety drills and staying prepared.

NWGratefulDiver - Your flow chart is perfect.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I love that flow chart Bob! It strikes just the right balance between humour and levity whilst clearly showing what I take many, many sentences to explain to my students. Would you object strenuously if I were to use it in my courses?

Be my guest ... I just created it in response to this thread ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[dumpsterDiver]

Recreational divers don't normally do this, but it might be useful to go through in your mind exactly what you would do when each piece of equipment fails. I actually do this myself, I do NOT like betting my life on any one piece of equipment or system.

None of us can survive all dives if everything fails, but we should be able to survive single item failures.. so WWYD:

Reg freeflows
Reg stops
BC starts inflating by itself.
You notice that you are at 100 feet and it is getting hard to breath and the guage is in the red.
mask strap breaks
regulator mouth piece falls off and you start choking
weight belt falls off (or if you are lucky you catch it on the back of your knees)
you get tangled in fishing line around the first stage and can't see it.
Fins strap breaks and you lose a fin.
You lose your buddy
You get lost underwater and have no idea where the anchor line is.
You jumped in and you forgot to turn your air on.
You are caught in a current that is taking you where you don't want to go.
You computer stops working or you can't understand it.
Your computer says you are in deco.
Your BC is leaking bad and not holding air.
Your dry suit gets ripped.
You are trying to make an exit on a rocky shore and the seas have increased dramatically.
A few sharks come around and appear agitated and aggressive.
A Moray eel tries to bite you (or does bite you)
You've totally exerted yourself and now find yourself gasping for air on the bottom and you begin to feel a strong (and natural) urge to bolt for the surface.
You've pulled yourself down an anchor line and when you get to the bottom, you find that you are drastically under-weighted.
You crawled under a ledge to catch a lobster and now you are wedged and seem stuck.
You come to the surface and there ain't no boat where you left it.
You've gone way deeper than you intended and you are scared and narced.

Then we can go into scenarios where your buddy has problems, does stupid things, requires help etc.

It probably helps to at least envision what you would do when stuff like this happens. And if you keep diving long enough, probably a lot of those things will happen sooner or later.

 

[4sak3n]

Be my guest ... I just created it in response to this thread ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

I see. Well played sir.

 

[Aqua-Andy]

Thank you for all of the responses. TS&M Hit it on the nail with what I was trying to get at. We can drill and practice all we can but the fact is, with any drill you know what is happening at the onset of the drill. Even in training you are expecting to have problems thrown at you. I guess we will just practice as we did before (maybe more often) and hope we are prepared for the day when it really does hit the fan. Bob thanks for the very entertaining flow chart, I'll have to attach it to a slate and keep it in with me.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

In July I'm doing a workshop with Doppler to look at this kind of stuff. While geared towards tech divers I am seriously looking at taking the lessons learned and doing a similar type deal for recreational divers. Every OW diver should have some idea of what to do in an emergency and how to do it. The only way is practice and setting up scenarios and then doing them. It is no different than the rescue skills that used to be a part of every OW course. Now only a few have them.

 

[Rich Keller]

If you practice your drills regularly and correctly, then any "real emergency" should just be another drill.

"Survival depends on being able to suppress anxiety and replace it with calm, clear, quick and correct reasoning..." -Sheck Exley

"Plans are useless but planning is everything."(Gen. Eisenhower) Practicing the same drill over and over again is useless because odds are it is never going to happen in exactly the same way you planned. More often then not it is going to be a couple of small, seemingly unrelated problems that occur the same time that will cause you the most trouble. Everyone understands what the big problems are and prepares for them but it is the small stuff that gets most people. Practice but change the drill every time. What you will end up practicing is how to problem solve under pressure, working the problem rather then have the problem work you to death.

 

[Colo Hippie]

The first thing I do when getting ready to dive is to remind myself and my dive buddy to remain calm, remember where we are (diving) and think/talk through a few common scenario's. It works for me so I remember the basics.