desert your buddy pressure survey

[Angie Reim]

Oh Dale....your next post made it clearier as to your 'real' attitude. So maybe not so scary. You are a Shock Jock. Doling out the gas as you see fit. What are you a Neil Bortz fan? "Someone's gotta Say It!".

I want my buddies to search for me as long as possible BUT not until they enter the realm of 'noble'. I don't leave the line with out a spool and if'n I'm lost I'm in trouble (probably stuck) somewhere or it would have to be one of those stupid, blink and you are on the wrong line situations. I don't let my buds get out of my sight while diving. We keep it close. If they don't do the same they get 'the finger'. Geez...no point in two dead divers.

[Cindy]

You know I have a story about this!

I have been involved in several episodes of divers off the line, my being off the line, divers leaving without letting the team know. It puts both yourself and a team in some real traumatic stress. That's why I get so upset when someone leaves the cave without letting someone know. Fortunatly I have not personally been in any accidents that were fatal but leaving the team is just not a good plan. I will tell you one story.

When I was training to be an Alachua Guide I eneded up diving with each guide per the request of Jim Taylor. I think he wanted to let the other guides know I was an OK diver and having a women in the group was OK. Anyway one fairly famous (name withheld to protect the guilty) cave diving instructor went with myself and his dive buddy. For some reason (It may have had to do with the fact we were diving Sat. Morning) the dive buddy became ill right after we hit the tannic water. He was leading, I was second and the official guide was third. So the buddy starts throwing up. I pushed him against the cave wall and held his reg. until he was done, kept one hand on the line and hoped he didn't die on me. About then the guide for some reason swam over the top of us and exited the cave. I guess he figured I had it handled or who knows, just figured we were screwing around and lost patience with us. When the diver felt better I took him to his first deco tank and got him settled and realised that I hadn't seen the guide and could not see a light. Granted I had about three foot of vis. I thought #### the last time I saw the guy he was in the big room kind of floating around. NURSE kicks in, "I bet the guy had a heart attack!" I let the dizzy guy know I am going back and take off like a bullet for the big room. No guide, I check downstream to the first restriction, no guide. I finally figure out I have very little gas and dart back to the sick diver and find he is looking at me like I am nuts because he saw the guide go past but was too sick to tell me! The guide was at the surface and I bitched him out. Big Laugh, he never thought anybody would ever think HE was in trouble. Anyway, end of story. Hope this makes someone think, Cindy

[Angie Reim]

Hmmmm.....sounds like you got some good guide training there Cindy. Crazy butt rhymes with witch tries to save everybody. " Yup. She'll be a good guide." You pass!

Do I smell setup? Just kidding around. Stuff happens like that sometimes. Glad it all turned out okay.

[tomhauburn]

Stuff happens

There were three of us in LR doing a dive to thirds. Close to the Merry go Round one diver has explosion of bubbles near his regulator. We offer backups but he does not take it and shuts down his post. True thumbed dive at that point. The diver with one reg is heading out as a lead diver, I follow close behind him and the third diver follows up. Along the way I notice the third diver is a little further back than normal but still in acceptable distance. I know the diver with one reg need me close by so I stick with him . As we make our way up the chimney we see the third diver coming up. However when we get to the deco bottles the third divers does not show up. We look at each other with questions and I decide to go after him after checking my gas supply. That's a pretty bad feeling to not have part of the team come up with you. All sorts of thoughts went through my mind. I was on the right hand side and on this particular day the flow is stiff and I am not making much progress. I make my way over to the wall to pull and go just a little while and the third diver comes up. After the dive the third diver explains he saw the second stage of the first diver in the tunnel where it had fallen off and picked it up and lost the line coming up in the chimney for a short while. The first diver was diving a new swivel at the time on his second stage. All turned out well but it just goes to show you usually it not one thing that goes wrong but several that make things go south. All turned out well but it did prove to me that having extra gas is a good thing. Had it been further back, in a siltout things could have gone really south. I guess you never know what to expect and you got to trust you buddies, I prefer to dive with folks who I know well enough to know how they react in situations.
Tom

[Cindy]

Hmmmm.....sounds like you got some good guide training there Cindy. Crazy butt rhymes with witch tries to save everybody. " Yup. She'll be a good guide." You pass!

Do I smell setup? Just kidding around. Stuff happens like that sometimes. Glad it all turned out okay.

zzzzzzzzz Didn't think of that! zzzzzzzzzzzzz blonde but tries harder!
Cindy

[Angie Reim]

BTW ya'll. Don't forget the story of that lady that got lost in Thunder Hole (or something)? Every other breath was off her BC. If her story is true I have tremendous respect for someone who kept her wits about her long enough the survive. So you get a CO2 headache. So what? It's like doubling your gas. Smart lady.

Didn't fetus lungs Gary do a Grand Traverse at Peacock once (deliberately skip breathing)? He did it on like 1/2 the usual gas or something. Gary tell us again. Please....

So there you go. There are lots of options if'n you don't panic and be careful not to pass out either. Just talk about it with your buddies. Talk a lot. Talk often. Forrest is right about this. Agree on a plan so no one unsure of each other. If someone just wants to 'go for it' and is tired of fussing at the water-side well then bye-bye. I've met more than one like that and it doesn't work for me.

Winging it is never good -- at least not for cave diving. Though some situation flexibility is an asset too. New buddies need to start with easy, schmeesy dives and work up. Even if each of you have done major dives in past, you haven't done them with each other. Just accept it as part of creating a new team. Just my 0.02. I aint' no expert. I'm sharing what I've learned.

Later ya'll.

Angie

[bletso]

Oh Dale....your next post made it clearier as to your 'real' attitude. So maybe not so scary. You are a Shock Jock. Doling out the gas as you see fit. What are you a Neil Bortz fan? "Someone's gotta Say It!".

Niel who?, sounds like a dessert or cuss word. Never heard of the guy. BTW, I don't consider myself a shock jock, but a real adamant realist. I have had too many colleagues make seemingly simple and deadly mistakes. Forrest didn't mention that my prefered dive equipment is a self made MCCR. People think I am too serious when it comes to diving, (even OWOC) and my reply is always that I never learned to breathe water.

Dale

[Angie Reim]

580 WDBO AM. Ultra-conservative, Libertarian shock jock. He wrote a book about the ugly truth "Someone's Got to Say It!".

He is a 'Great American' according to himself. He is #2 to Shaun Hannity - "The High Priest of the Church of the Painful Truth".

No offense intended. Just being silly.

[Jason B.]

I realize this is a few days old but thought I'd throw in what I was taught (as it appears everyone does it differently).

If the separation occurs on the penetration side of the dive, I was taught to take the gas used and add it to my original thirds. This becomes your new turn pressure. So if you go in with 3600 and your original thirds was 1200 and you used 500psi to penetrate up to the point that your buddy goes missing, your turn becomes 500 (gas used) + 1200 (original thirds) to give a new turn of 1700psi.

If the separation occurs on the exit side, I was taught that you need a gentlemen's agreement prior to the dive that says you are allowed to use your buddies 1/3 to search for him.

[aainslie]

I realize this is a few days old but thought I'd throw in what I was taught (as it appears everyone does it differently).

If the separation occurs on the penetration side of the dive, I was taught to take the gas used and add it to my original thirds. This becomes your new turn pressure. So if you go in with 3600 and your original thirds was 1200 and you used 500psi to penetrate up to the point that your buddy goes missing, your turn becomes 500 (gas used) + 1200 (original thirds) to give a new turn of 1700psi.

If the separation occurs on the exit side, I was taught that you need a gentlemen's agreement prior to the dive that says you are allowed to use your buddies 1/3 to search for him.

That's a nice but wildly conservative rule. A better one mught be to just double the gas used so far and go with that. So if you've dropped from 3600 to 3000, your exit should be at 2 x 600, i.e. 1200.

Even that only works on the way IN. Let's say on the way OUT you're 700 ft from the end and your buddy is gone. You're WAY past thirds - let's say you're down to 1500 psi left. Do you leave immediately?

These simple rules don't really work that well IMHO. You need some idea of the flow, viz and depth, and your gas usage per 100 feet in that flow/viz/depth. In a high flow cave at 60 ft I'd go down to 500 psi in that situation. In a low flow cave at 100 ft, maybe 700 psi or so. If it's a creepy little Cindy cave, perhaps 1000. Basically I think one has to have the nous in an emergency to realize that the TRUE lowest pressure is that they're willing to accept.

Lee and Rich, my thought would be to know what twice one's required gas is - and THEN make a decision about eating into that reserve. It would take a pretty cold blooded diver to exit without eating at least somewhat into that reserve. But I don't think I'd ever have the guts to use the entire reserve - maybe half of it.