dive3
26-11-07, 11:40
This is a small incident with a happy outcome, and looking back I can laugh about it.
But just for a few minutes in a dark, silty loch long, I thought I was a gonner! :(
I had gone to dive the caves with two more experienced buddies (one very experienced - an instructor too) but found the car park spaces full. We trundled off down the A814 to dive at the Glen Douglas road end site. I didn't know much about this site, other than the fact that the seabed was about 70m, but I was happy to follow the guidance of the other two. I didn't really ask enough questions about the dive.
We were soon in the water, with a plan to descend the wall to 30m and then follow a zigzag up the slope, keen to look for scallops on the way up.
I had not long completed my advanced course, and I was diving slightly overweighted since I occassionally felt a little "floaty" on safety stops. I had also been slightly concerned about air use, and so had in previous dives delayed putting air in the suit rather than put it in too early and thus have to dump it. Midway down my descent, it also struck me (:( )that this was the first dive of my career where the seabed was beyond my depth rating.
Hmmmmm.
On the decent, I had turned to face the wall to give me a reference point, but hadn't fully appreciated that as I descended vertically, so the wall would eventually come out to meet me since it isn't vertical. The first I knew that I was getting close was when the viz suddenly worsened dramatically, I guess because my fins were brushing against the wall.
Then, to my surprise, I had the sensation of my foot being "held" and I began to topple backwards.
I frantically flailed around, stirring up a massive silt cloud which reduced viz to zero, until in my struggles my foot popped out of my fin. I then (as it felt at the time) shot off towards the bottom.
I went nuts, fantically trying to fin upwards (all thoughts of bouyancy control clean out of my mind), dragging great draughts of air in increasinly panicky gulps. I can also testify that, having been told that you can breathe, spit, shout and vomit through a regulator, you can also whimper like a beaten dog through it too. I peered through the gloom at my computer, eventually gathering my flailing torch and pointing it at the screen. The display read 26m or so, but wasn't moving, and yet I could see the silt rushing past in the torch light as I (in my mind) raced to 70m, ooa problems, rapid ascent with unfulfilled deco obligations, ambulances, helicopters, pots, death, or even worse, very cross wifey...
My computer must be broken maybe, I thought, and tried to swim for it, but slowly but surely began to rationalise my situation. Was I really sinking? I had a old mechanical gauge on the console that, although it was wildly inaccurate, did seem to register changes, so I peered at it. No movement there. I went back to the computer on my wrist. 26.4m. I got some kind of control over my breathing, and looked at the gauge - 90bar left. I peered out through the gloom for my buddies, but could see nothing. I stopped finning, looking at the gauge, and started to gradually sink, so I put some air in my suit and regained neutral bouyancy. By now, the slit was beginning to settle downwards, and I momentarily caught glimpses of flashing torches about 20m away to my right and slightly above me. I reached out and felt the wall, and then to my surprise I found my fin jammed between two boulders. The whole quick release clip for the spring straps had come off the pillar on the fin, and so I was able to reassemble it a remount my fin. Regaining my breath (now 80bar) I looked around and was appalled to see millions of tiny moon jellyfish that worryingly could not be touched. I must be hallucinating!
I finned off to the torches, thumbed the dive and we made an uneventful dive with safety stop before surfacing and regaining the shore, only realasing just before I surfaced that I probably hadn't been hallucinating, it not being terribly unusual to see jelly fish in sea lochs (D'oh!), and I had in fact probably seen baby jellyfish.
The lessons I learned were
1. Know more about your dive, and don't dump the responsibility for what is going to happen on others.
2. Dive with the minimum weight you can manage. Get your bouyancy 100% right if your are diving over a drop off. This would have made my descent more controllable, and I could have adopted a better "hovering" descent rather than the ungainly fin first plumet.
3. The female part of the quick release clip on my fins is now bolted to the fin.
4. If you are in bother, calm down and sort it out. Don't just think that the narcosis starts at 30m. You might only really notice the "I've had two martinis and I'm feeling groovy" type narcosis at 30m and beyond, but the " Oh ****, ****, ****, I'm gonna die!" type can be found at shallower depths....
5. Finally, having the utter p*** taken out of you about the incident by your buddies at every opportunity is actually very cathartic and characted building.
B******s.......
But just for a few minutes in a dark, silty loch long, I thought I was a gonner! :(
I had gone to dive the caves with two more experienced buddies (one very experienced - an instructor too) but found the car park spaces full. We trundled off down the A814 to dive at the Glen Douglas road end site. I didn't know much about this site, other than the fact that the seabed was about 70m, but I was happy to follow the guidance of the other two. I didn't really ask enough questions about the dive.
We were soon in the water, with a plan to descend the wall to 30m and then follow a zigzag up the slope, keen to look for scallops on the way up.
I had not long completed my advanced course, and I was diving slightly overweighted since I occassionally felt a little "floaty" on safety stops. I had also been slightly concerned about air use, and so had in previous dives delayed putting air in the suit rather than put it in too early and thus have to dump it. Midway down my descent, it also struck me (:( )that this was the first dive of my career where the seabed was beyond my depth rating.
Hmmmmm.
On the decent, I had turned to face the wall to give me a reference point, but hadn't fully appreciated that as I descended vertically, so the wall would eventually come out to meet me since it isn't vertical. The first I knew that I was getting close was when the viz suddenly worsened dramatically, I guess because my fins were brushing against the wall.
Then, to my surprise, I had the sensation of my foot being "held" and I began to topple backwards.
I frantically flailed around, stirring up a massive silt cloud which reduced viz to zero, until in my struggles my foot popped out of my fin. I then (as it felt at the time) shot off towards the bottom.
I went nuts, fantically trying to fin upwards (all thoughts of bouyancy control clean out of my mind), dragging great draughts of air in increasinly panicky gulps. I can also testify that, having been told that you can breathe, spit, shout and vomit through a regulator, you can also whimper like a beaten dog through it too. I peered through the gloom at my computer, eventually gathering my flailing torch and pointing it at the screen. The display read 26m or so, but wasn't moving, and yet I could see the silt rushing past in the torch light as I (in my mind) raced to 70m, ooa problems, rapid ascent with unfulfilled deco obligations, ambulances, helicopters, pots, death, or even worse, very cross wifey...
My computer must be broken maybe, I thought, and tried to swim for it, but slowly but surely began to rationalise my situation. Was I really sinking? I had a old mechanical gauge on the console that, although it was wildly inaccurate, did seem to register changes, so I peered at it. No movement there. I went back to the computer on my wrist. 26.4m. I got some kind of control over my breathing, and looked at the gauge - 90bar left. I peered out through the gloom for my buddies, but could see nothing. I stopped finning, looking at the gauge, and started to gradually sink, so I put some air in my suit and regained neutral bouyancy. By now, the slit was beginning to settle downwards, and I momentarily caught glimpses of flashing torches about 20m away to my right and slightly above me. I reached out and felt the wall, and then to my surprise I found my fin jammed between two boulders. The whole quick release clip for the spring straps had come off the pillar on the fin, and so I was able to reassemble it a remount my fin. Regaining my breath (now 80bar) I looked around and was appalled to see millions of tiny moon jellyfish that worryingly could not be touched. I must be hallucinating!
I finned off to the torches, thumbed the dive and we made an uneventful dive with safety stop before surfacing and regaining the shore, only realasing just before I surfaced that I probably hadn't been hallucinating, it not being terribly unusual to see jelly fish in sea lochs (D'oh!), and I had in fact probably seen baby jellyfish.
The lessons I learned were
1. Know more about your dive, and don't dump the responsibility for what is going to happen on others.
2. Dive with the minimum weight you can manage. Get your bouyancy 100% right if your are diving over a drop off. This would have made my descent more controllable, and I could have adopted a better "hovering" descent rather than the ungainly fin first plumet.
3. The female part of the quick release clip on my fins is now bolted to the fin.
4. If you are in bother, calm down and sort it out. Don't just think that the narcosis starts at 30m. You might only really notice the "I've had two martinis and I'm feeling groovy" type narcosis at 30m and beyond, but the " Oh ****, ****, ****, I'm gonna die!" type can be found at shallower depths....
5. Finally, having the utter p*** taken out of you about the incident by your buddies at every opportunity is actually very cathartic and characted building.
B******s.......