What's the worst mistake you've ever made and walked away from?

hroark2112

hroark2112

Bah humbug!
I know....admitting your mistakes in a public forum isn't done, but let's give it a shot!

I made 2 mistakes recently. One was just dumb and won't be repeated, the other was much more than dumb and definitely won't be repeated!

First mistake - Knowing I had an issue with a scrubber head popping off if it took a good slap, I did a 18' giant stride into the surf. Guess what? The head popped off & the unit flooded. Dive ended, and a nice long surface swim against a nice surge with a flooded unit while trying not to lose any important parts. At least I did that successfully...the trip wasn't ruined but it was embarrassing to say the least!

Second mistake - During a night dive, we decided to play with the fluorescent light & mask covers. It got distracting and I wasn't watching my depth often enough. Next time I looked at my Petrel, my PO2 was 1.9 and climbing. I bailed out and got it under control quickly. I got rid of the damn mask cover and paid attention for the rest of the dive.

Anyone else ever done something wrong? Or am I alone in the world?
 
Someone on here or similar was once talking about being a diveguide using his breather and looking at ways of getting off the boat quicker. I was on a boat recently with two other rebreather buddies and a boatful of n00b OW divers. We decided to split up, escort a pair of divers each around the site, reunite at the boat and go for our dive together afterwards.

Jumped in and was taken straight back to OW dive 1 as an instructor, these kids were all over the shop. It was a mission to get them to the bottom and then find a bit of sand to give everyone a chance to settle down. Mistake 1 - getting well distracted and not checking everything on the surface or at 5m. OK, we're at the bottom and the n00bs have settled. Off we go - and I grab my handset to switch to high setpoint. "Dive now? Y/N" uh oh. Look at HUD (shearwater addon), it's off! Mistake 2 - I have a bloody OCB, this would have been the perfect time to use it. Or dil flush.

Decided I wanted to know what was going on though, so fumbled around my shoulder to find the piezo for the shearwater HUD. Got it. Counted eight flashes on one channel, nine on the other. HammerthatO2buttontime. Got it up to 0.3 and then booted the handset, declining its kind offer to calibrate. Rest of the dive was fine.

Later came to the conclusion that a "just one of those things" backward roll managed to bounce the batteries and bump the Shearwater box's piezo against a hose or something because it was all running before I jumped.

Now I've learned not to rely on "different" being a trigger on the HUD - because whilst that works when it starts flashing lots, it doesn't work when it goes quiet. And so I consciously look at it every few minutes to check. The battery bounce continues to be an issue and one of the handsets has become a little twitchy with a propensity to reset itself. Might be time to replace it - either with the spare I have in the cupboard or with an AV1.

Damned scary how easily it reached that point with a few distractions and how lucky I was to have had that hint that all wasn't well before I blacked out.

Damned scary how easy something like this can happen to someone whose first secret inner thought on reading fatality writeups, probably like most people, is "that kinda shit could NEVER happen to me, I'm a good conscientious rebreather diver".
 
Yesterday, on a swim up the river to get to the cave, I pulled myself over a log only to get slapped in the chest by a gator tail. It knocked the wind out of me, removed the DSV from my mouth and filled my mouth with water in one quick motion. If I would have been any deeper than a few feet, I doubt that I would be here to type this.

lesson learned = don't f**k with an alligator.
 
One time I went back to open circuit single tank jacket bc... and I'm here to talk about it.




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Giant stride with my primary reel attached to my scooter ring. I am lucky I was able to have kids after.


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hroark2112 said:
First mistake - Knowing I had an issue with a scrubber head popping off if it took a good slap, I did a 18' giant stride into the surf. Guess what? The head popped off & the unit flooded.
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Interested to know which kind of dumb you thought this one was?

On a more factual note- what unit can "with an issue" have the head pop off?


My biggest mistake was "adjusting" the contents of the weight belt before a 45mtr OC dive as a lowly qualified diver, only for it to completely fall off on ascent with 20min of deco owed and spending 20min holding onto the shot upside down.
 
A long time ago (11/09/2010) I was diving twin 15's Air with an Isolation manifold with a 50/18 and O2 decompression gasses.

After completing 2 dives I was asked to demonstrate to a student a 40m decompression dive. The student was on a Air with a 12 L sport equipment . Since I had about 120 bar left in each tank, I agreed. The dive start time was 18H17 so most of it was in darkness.

During the pre-dive checks the rigging area located on a float became rather crowded due to night dive preparations. Instead of using my right hand to open the Isolation manifold I used the left hand to open the manifold fully. And that simple action nearly caused my death.

Following is a summary of what transpired:

17min / 35m (105 ft): I find myself in an "Out-of-Gas" situation. Student does not realise the seriousness of the situation and believes I am joking when I ask for air. Finally offers the primary DV without purging the DV. Upon inhalation I inhale water which causes an immediate Laringo Spasm. I start to go into cycles of semi-consciousness.

18min / 20.8m (62 ft): During a brief moment of semi-consciousness I manage to switch to the 50/18 sling. I am however only able to draw in small amounts of gas. Student attempts a deco stop but we start to ascent.

21 min / 6.5m (18.6ft): The student manages to arrest the ascent at 6.5 meters by deflating my wing.

23min / 39m (117ft): We drop to the bottom again with me desperately fighting for any tiny breath available to me, in this case the 50/18. Since I am not 'with it' I do not equalise which results in a burst right Ear-Drum on descend. The cold water in the middle ear immediately causes severe waves of nausea.

24min / 3.8m (11.40ft): We ascent again and the student attempts another deco stop. By this time I am vomiting into my DV. I realise that the student must be close to an Out-of-Air situation himself so when he attempts to arrest my third descend I fight him off. He releases me and I sink back to the bottom.

26min / 39m (117ft): I sink into the mud again. I am still on the 50/18 and now on a PPO2 of 2.45 bar. I try to get up but cannot find the strength to sit up or even locate "up" in the darkness. Then the Technical Training kicks in: "You will never ever give up but fight till the last breath". So I pressed all the available inflator units to find some 'rest air' which could assist me to get up. To my surprise the second wing kept inflating. I allowed the wing (60 pds) to shoot me back to the surface.

27min - 28min / I am back on the surface still fighting to breathe. The laringo spasm relaxes after about 30 seconds and I can breathe again. But I know I am in serious trouble regarding Deco. In the starlight I locate a SMB 2 meter away from me. I try to swim but my legs won't work. So I doggy paddle across and descend again to 6m and switch to Oxygen which I stay on for 25min.

The student surfaced with no Air left and was immediately taken down again by another technical diver who put him on O2 as well. He suffered no DCS or other syptoms.

Cause of incident: Not being used to using my left hand I had closed the Isolation manifold. This caused the left cylinder to empty. The right cylinder however still contained 120 bar. This was the gas that assisted me to the surface when I activated the second wing inflator.

Did I sugger any after-effects: None whatsoever. Why?
1) I never could take a full breath to inflate my lungs so they could not burst on ascent.
2) The little gas I got was mostly 50/18. That's a lot of O2.
3) Since I could not fully breathe I was 'protected' against an Oxygen Toxicity Hit.

Lesson learned: I never ever leave a cylinder on a stop position which could then be either fully opened or fully closed. I always turn it back a half turn from the stop position. Then it cannot be fully closed, ever.
 
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Uwe Sieg said:
17min / 35m (105 ft): I find myself in an "Out-of-Gas" situation. Student does not realise the seriousness of the situation and believes I am joking when I ask for air. Finally offers the primary DV without purging the DV. Upon inhalation I inhale water which causes an immediate Laringo Spasm. I start to go into cycles of semi-consciousness.
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In my OC tech training on mainifolded doubles, we got taught if its becoming hard to pull on the reg, you are going out of gas. Check all your valves first (s drill style). This helped in at least one similar situation where i'd left the manifold closed. oh and to start to ascend while doing so. 'fu'$#% ASCEND' haha memories. Also, I know how it feels leaving the mainifold closed. it feels really f'ing stupid!


My other mistakes are around things like leaving a 50% closed (which supplys drysuit gas) or forgetting a bag/reel on the boat. Or diving into a strong current with no scooter and getting swept away.
 
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Few closish calls over the years but this is the one that taught me the most..

On a business trip in LA - day free so decided to take a trip to Catalina Island.

At the time most of my diving had been in the UK on deepish wrecks twinset etc.

Thought I was fine with anything that the fair weather divers on the other side of the pond could throw at me.

On arrival on Catalina Island I managed to hire some dive dive kit - single cylinder, wetsuit etc.

So after chatting to the dive shop owner and explaining what an experienced British diver I was, off I went on my own off the shore to to find some wreck that lay a few hundred yards from the beach.

Got down to 30ish meters and saw some kind of flat fish, just like we get in Dorset. Decided to give it a friendly prod... At this point I was about a meter away and as I extended my hand I suddenly felt what seemed like 30 thousand volts going through my body and me fighting to remain conscious.

Anyway needless to say I decided to try and end the dive slightly quicker than I otherwise might have..

After getting back to the hire place with zero bar in my 12 litre (sorry 10 litre US aluminium cylinder pretending to be a 12 litre cylinder), I explained my experience to the owner who said something along the lines of .... ' whoa no way man that wasn't no flat fish, that was a torpedo ray...... ' (think electric eal disguised as a ray) ..say no more....... Lessons learned - make sure you know your Ali's from your steels and make sure you have a plastic handle on your stabber when you go flatty bashing in the US..
 
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DSix36 said:
Yesterday, on a swim up the river to get to the cave, I pulled myself over a log only to get slapped in the chest by a gator tail. It knocked the wind out of me, removed the DSV from my mouth and filled my mouth with water in one quick motion. If I would have been any deeper than a few feet, I doubt that I would be here to type this.

lesson learned = don't f**k with an alligator.
Click to expand...


Funny, the story from Jeff is that he gave you an ass whooping. :)
 
Taking a PADI OW course was the first :p: and the second :

Diving whit a cold , trapped underwater at 6mtr whit a reversed block.
it took me a lot of desend and asends to get past it and pfffffffffiew i was out.
the next day i had some strange stuf in my ear , it apeard to be blood ... and my ear drum was perforarted.
 
DSix36 said:
Ding, Ding, Ding; We have a winner. Nobody could do anything dumber.:what:
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Sadly I beg to differ

HPIM0019.jpg




Thats one in use on my clasic, one in transit to be repaired and one on its way back from repair :D

ATB

Mark
 
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