Under Pressure

Not a lot going on just now, just the usual boring uneventful shore diving the sea lochs.

Wednesday 4th April, Dive 130:

Dived the Caves at Loch Long with Gerry & Fran (but mostly just Gerry). As the visibility reports have been very poor recently we agreed as part of the buddy checks that if anybody got separated we would look around for them for two minutes instead of the usual one.
Went in as a three with Gerry leading, got to six metres, did bubble checks, Fran had lots of bubbles coming from her A Clamp so we thumbed it.

On the surface Gerry replaced the O Ring from Fran’s first stage…

I mucked about on the surface taking pictures, I got this nice one of The Cobbler.

We went back in and stayed close together, this time no bubbles, everything was fine and we went down to around twenty five metres, using lots of torch signals to keep in contact as the visibility was very poor, probably at best two metres with most of the time just being able to see torch light from each other. Lots of macro life, small star fish, soft corals, anenomes, dead men’s fingers, pretty rock face as usual at the caves.

We had planned to turn the dive after around eighteen minutes. I noticed Fran was deeper than both Gerry and myself and at that point Gerry started finning up the slope, ascending to shallower waters. I signalled and stayed finning with him, we reached the fifteen metre point and I signalled to Gerry we had lost Fran.

We stayed roughly at the area we had finned up and shone our torch beams down in the direction we had come from, after two minutes and no sign of Fran I signalled to Gerry he should bag off. Gerry and I started our ascent to the surface in free water, however at around eleven metres I lost sight of Gerry.
I found a pinnacle in thirteen metres, unleashed my dsmb and reel, launched the dsmb, my first attempt seen me not put enough air into the dsmb so I had to reel it in and do it again, this time using the exhaust gas from my second stage and putting a couple of breaths worth into the bag, this time the Bag flew to the surface with the reel spinning like a crazy Ivan.

When I surfaced, Gerry was waiting on me beside my dsmb with no sign of Fran, we both shouted and then seen her surface way down the loch.

Gerry and I did the surface swim back to the normal exit point, we collected Fran from the shore and gave in for the day.

Notes: We lost Fran at around 22 minutes, by the time I surfaced it was 39 minutes duration, Gerry had been on top for 8 minutes without site of Fran or myself, however he had my dsmb to mark my position. we both waited a couple of minutes to find Fran. It was not a nice feeling when you know her daughters on the shore reading a magazine and you don’t know where your buddy has gone.

In Hindsight I learned some lessons from this dive

1: Do not dive in three’s when the visibility is poor.

2: Ensure that everybody knows what the separated buddy procedure is.

3: Expand the lost buddy search time when the vis is poor and all divers are capable, experienced and self sufficient to a more suitable time lapse, our training says one minute, we agreed two, in hindsight Id probably agree five minutes.

Although this is a bit of a catch 22, if something is wrong you want to be on the surface ASAP getting assistance rather than continuing your dive for five minutes that could be critical to somebody’s life.

Saturday 7th April, Dives 131 & 132:

Met up with Stevie Hickdive. We headed off to Loch long and the A Frames for a couple of afternoon dives. Stevie has dived this site more than myself so he agreed to lead. First dive was almost dead on high tide and I took the camera in but didn’t have much luck due to poor visibility and my shaky hand. I felt heavy in the water and seemed to be adding more air than normal to my suit / wing. First dive we went down to around twenty five metres, had a bimble around the frames with Stevie using his new lightsaber HID torch and me being embarrassed as I hadn’t charged my greenforce. we found a whole dinner plate of prawns under the frames and a couple of sea snails, gobbi’s, star fish and lots of muscles.

Second dive I had to stop at six metres and let Stevie sort out my valves as I was getting a bad breath from my primary, I switched to my back up reg and all was fine. Stevie turned my right post valve on fully and my primary reg started to function perfectly (DOH!).

We had a shallower dive this time finding more structure and slightly more life, overall visibility was once again poor deeper than six metres.

I checked my weighting at the end of the second dive and found myself to be a little too heavy, when I checked my weight belt I was actually a kilo heavier than normal, this was due to me taking weights out for the pool the other night and not putting the right weights back into my belt.

Safe and sound although more lessons learned.

1: Charge my torch.

2: Check weights

3: Learn to sort my valves out properly myself!

I seem to be learning a lot of lessons recently, have I become complacent and just accepted my own diving? Its a question I need to think about and hopefully these minor issues will help me avoid anything more serious.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 8th, 2007 at 1:13 am and is filed under Dive Reports, Scuba Diving. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.