intotheblue
New Member
Where to begin? So, past Sunday I went for a boat dive to the Eastern Scheldt in The Netherlands with my local diving club. It's a yearly event and this time we had rented 6 small boats, 6 people per boat. Every time lots of fun during this day out. The weather was going to be great as we were still in a heatwave with 34 degrees temperatures forecasted that day. We'd arranged to be there at 8:00 in the morning and it's a bit of drive for me as I'm located in Belgium so that meant getting up early at 5:30.
CCR setup
To give some more context, I've started rebreather diving after my course on a JJ CCR about a year ago. In the mean time I've logged about 40 dives with it, all of them with my drysuit, weighted properly. The setup is very basic, 3 liter dil (air) and oxy. Dil feeds the ADV, wing and drysuit. There's SPGs for both over the shoulder to monitor pressure when needed. I always dive with a 11cft bailout with air at 200bar which has an SPG, regulator and inflation hose attached.
Buoyancy
The dive before this one I dove with my light undergarment and drysuit in a local lake where the temperature was 23 degrees. It actually felt a little too warm to be honest. Dipped a couple of times beneath the thermocline to remedy this. So for the boat dive, I made the last minute decision when prepping the evening before to take out my 7mm wetsuit from storage in the basement. It's been 6 years since I dove that. At that point I made a mental note to remove some of the P weight that I have on my backplate. Which I forgot... [1st mistake]
When I switched from my thick winter undergarments to the light ones I already didn't reduce my P weight. So I was already a bit overweighted, but now for sure...
CCR prep
I'm an absolute precision freak when it comes to checklists and prepping the rebreather. So I went through all of them the evening before. I'd only have to load it into the car and do some final checks on the boat before jumping in.
The oxygen bottle still had 120 bars, plenty for a 30~40m dive.
The diluent bottle had 70 remaining. I considered that was a bit on the low side, but I'd only be able to fill on my way to the port the next day. This was the 2nd day that I woke up ridiculously early and I actually had limited time to spare to be on time at the port.. So I made the lousy judgement that 70 bar would suffice, I'd done some dives like that before. I still got my bailout inflation hose that I could plug into my MAV if I'd run low right? [2nd mistake]
Dive planning
That day I was going to be diving with Frank (fake name), 3* CMAS certified like me and he'd be diving open circuit on a 12 liter 300 bar bottle filled with air. During the boat ride he was talking about a dive he did on the North sea some weeks ago where he'd raked up 24 mins of deco on air, on this setup that really isn't suited for anything like this. Obviously, he ran low on gas by the end of his deco but managed to surface well. He made the point for himself to only allow a 15 min TTS on dives from then on. With this in mind I should have been more vigilant in the planning I was going to do. [3rd mistake]
We'd plan to dive to max 40m when the boat drops us. With a TTS of 15 mins as Frank suggested. He'd be the limiting factor in regards to deco so I was ok with that. He would shoot an SMB at 12 meters and we'd do our deco from there. Should have decided to shoot from the bottom as we're quite close to the shipping lane. [4th mistake]
I asked him to indicate me when he was at half pressure (150bar) and when he hit the TTS we agreed upon. Procedure for losing each other would be to finish deco obligations separately and surface.
Dropping
We arrive at the dive site, some 100 meters from the shoreline and get ready to drop from the boat. I made my final checks on the CCR and got ready to do the backward roll from the boat, all good. Someone on the boat reminded me to inflate my wing. I hadn't inflated my wing... wtf. I still don't know why I didn't catch that myself. Perhaps because I was still a bit tired, a lot of things going on on the boat, I don't know? But I do know I'd have sunk as a rock if I'd jumped being so overweighted in my wetsuit. [5th mistake]
Dive itself
We get into the water, team up and attach a buddy line. I know, don't get me started on the buddy line.. I'm not a big fan of this but it's a thing that's used in the organisation of my diving club and Frank wanted to use it. So I attach it to my right arm to at least avoid any possible entanglement with my bailout. Once we're at the bottom on a slope at 20m we find our way gently deeper to 30m and eventually 40, all well. After 5 mins or so at 40 I start heading back North to get back in the direction of the slope of the shoreline which is away from the shipping lane. I get the impression that Frank is swimming quite hard as if he's trying to find the slope back to the shallows. He started swimming a bit ahead of me and the buddy line was yanked. At this point I get a bit concerned so I check on him, both pressure and TTS. He's at half pressure (150bar) and his TTS is at 16 mins. I indicate him that it's time to start ascending in open water.
Ascent
While ascending I notice I'm really having a bit of struggle with my buoyancy. Being so overweighted I have to vent large amounts, not really used to this. My trim which is usually on spot in my drysuit is now ridiculously bad, I just can't manage to stay horizontal at all. The heavy jetfins were probably not helping here. Sucks to dive like this, but I try to make due.
At 12 meter I ask Frank what his deco status is. I couldn't make head nor tail of his hand signals so I asked him to show me his computer. He accidentally pressed a button and we went through some screens. I still didn't know what his ceiling was. Mine was at 6 meters, like 2 mins or so. So I indicate to him that he's in control and heads to the right depth. Turns out his ceiling was also 6 meters. He's quite focused on his computer and has some trouble maintaining his depth. At the same time, I'm struggling as well. Now less with holding depth but more with my handicapped seahorse / standing trim. At 12 meter, he didn't deploy his SMB as he was too busy with his buoyancy and deco obligation. I should have raised my SMB at this point. There was no visual reference at all. And good chance we were already drifting in the direction of the shipping lane. [6th mistake]
Low diluent
While moving up to 6 meters I notice on my dil SPG that I'm running very low, 20 bars left. I wasted all of that dil trying to get my buoyancy right in the shallows. I know that going from 6m to the surface would only benefit it, no need for extra inflation, but in the back of my mind I started to become really concerned with being so overweighted...
Now that we're at 6 meters, Frank's correct deco ceiling, I make the decision to send my SMB up. I unpack the SMB, take the double ender of the spool and clip it away. It's an SMB with inflation nipple, instinctively I reach for my drysuit inflator, which is tucked under by belt. But considering the low DIL I abort that thought quickly. So the alternative is my bailout inflator. I reach back but can't find it by hand. It's between the regulator and my side. Why can't I locate it? I didn't want to deal with a loose hanging bailout and ready to go SMB in the other hand but ok... Reach back to unclip the bottom clip of the bailout to bring it forward and find the inflator. The clip is stuck, completely... It's a clip that can go just around the bottom bar of the JJ stand and can only be properly opened when perpendicular to the stand. I should have replaced that thing a long time ago! [7th mistake]
I check my DIL SPG, it's indicating 10bar but might have well been close to 0. Frank has no idea about this and showing a DIL SPG would make him none the wiser as he's not familiar with a rebreather.
I'm severely overweighted, I have that unfurled SMB in the other hand with no way of inflating it. What the f*** do I do? At that point I felt too many things already didn't go to plan and I made the call to head for the surface and not spend another single second trying to fix the situation. An irrational decision driven by my concern over not being able to inflate anything at this point. It would be the easy fix... So I indicated to Frank that my deco was clear and that I'd be heading up. I removed the buddy line and went for the surface. [8th mistake]
Keeping an extra close eye on my PP02. Once on the surface I checked my surroundings first, thank God no boats nearby. And inflated my wing orally to the max.
At that time I didn't have the reflex to switch to my bailout as my loop was still perfectly fine. What I should have done in hindsight is stick together with Frank, switch to my bailout regulator and inflate the SMB orally. Being on open circuit would have given me the option to orally inflate the wing if needed as well. I pondered this thought very briefly but instead opted for the easy way out by just surfacing, a selfish decision.
Boat/SMB incident
A rib boat of some other divers nearby spotted me without SMB within a minute and rushed over, those things are speedy. I explained them that I had lost all of my DIL, wasn't able to inflate the SMB and headed for the surface due to concerns over inflation. Mentioned that I didn't have any deco obligation but that my buddy Frank was still finishing his. But where's Frank? No SMB locating him at this point.
One of the boats of my diving club notices me with the other boat and heads over to me. In this line of sight between me and that boat heading over there were some bubbles coming up, indicating where Frank was. We started shouting to alarm the boat heading over that there was still a diver over there (without SMB, relatively shallow mind you). There was no way for the captain of that boat to see those bubbles as the driving position is all the way in the back and there's cabin in the line of sight. So he runs over the bubbles and by that time put the boat in reverse. At that same unfortunate moment Frank's SMB was coming up, got sucked into the prop and was mangled right away. [9th mistake]
I swim over to the boat and the captain asks me why I'm here alone, with no SMB, where's Frank? I told him that I had to come up without because I was low on dil and had issues with inflating. Frank was finishing his deco. At that point it's clear that there's an SMB in the prop. It's hanging out. So he asks me to check it and try to cut it loose. Before I start any of that (paranoid as I am) I ask him multiple times to make sure the engine is turned off and that it won't be turned on by accident in any case. I didn't know at that point that he was alone on the boat... He assured me it was safe and I cut that SMB loose.
At this point I had half the SMB in my hand with the line still attached and the other half wrapped around the prop. There was some weight to it so I presumed Frank was still holding the other side. At this point I'm wondering, do I hold on to that thing or not? Somehow I got the idea in my head that Frank might have been hit by the boat, tangled in the line and this would be the only way of finding him back. There were still bubbles coming up, so we assumed he's fine and made the decision to let it go and focus on cutting loose the rest of the SMB in the prop so we'd get the boat moving again. I passed him my unfurled empty SMB and bailout after quite some fiddling with that annoyingly stuck clip and climbed aboard.
A couple minutes later Frank popped up, alive and well with his reel in his hands and half an SMB.
He knew something was wrong when the reel kept unrolling. He finished the dive with a warning on his computer on the deco but without any issues. Little later I stepped from the boat that picked me up onto my original one, some people were offering some assistance as this wasn't a trivial thing to do due to the way the boats are build, but I was in no mood to receive help. So evidently, I lost my grip on the slippery handle and fell backwards with the rebreather on my back. I Luckily I managed to land it on the stand. Proves the JJ is quite robust, not a single dent. Not accepting help when moody... falling. Guess I deserved that one. [10th mistake]
Why am I writing this all down?
I've learned a lot from this dive and there are quite a bit of things that I'll improve in future dives. Might add them below at a later time, took me quite a bit of time to write this up.. It might be useful to anyone else, especially the CCR part. Posted it here since I've read a lot of other stories to learn from.
On the other hand, the captain of the boat that picked me up was clueless on everything that happened before it. So this might serve him as a nice story to read
CCR setup
To give some more context, I've started rebreather diving after my course on a JJ CCR about a year ago. In the mean time I've logged about 40 dives with it, all of them with my drysuit, weighted properly. The setup is very basic, 3 liter dil (air) and oxy. Dil feeds the ADV, wing and drysuit. There's SPGs for both over the shoulder to monitor pressure when needed. I always dive with a 11cft bailout with air at 200bar which has an SPG, regulator and inflation hose attached.
Buoyancy
The dive before this one I dove with my light undergarment and drysuit in a local lake where the temperature was 23 degrees. It actually felt a little too warm to be honest. Dipped a couple of times beneath the thermocline to remedy this. So for the boat dive, I made the last minute decision when prepping the evening before to take out my 7mm wetsuit from storage in the basement. It's been 6 years since I dove that. At that point I made a mental note to remove some of the P weight that I have on my backplate. Which I forgot... [1st mistake]
When I switched from my thick winter undergarments to the light ones I already didn't reduce my P weight. So I was already a bit overweighted, but now for sure...
CCR prep
I'm an absolute precision freak when it comes to checklists and prepping the rebreather. So I went through all of them the evening before. I'd only have to load it into the car and do some final checks on the boat before jumping in.
The oxygen bottle still had 120 bars, plenty for a 30~40m dive.
The diluent bottle had 70 remaining. I considered that was a bit on the low side, but I'd only be able to fill on my way to the port the next day. This was the 2nd day that I woke up ridiculously early and I actually had limited time to spare to be on time at the port.. So I made the lousy judgement that 70 bar would suffice, I'd done some dives like that before. I still got my bailout inflation hose that I could plug into my MAV if I'd run low right? [2nd mistake]
Dive planning
That day I was going to be diving with Frank (fake name), 3* CMAS certified like me and he'd be diving open circuit on a 12 liter 300 bar bottle filled with air. During the boat ride he was talking about a dive he did on the North sea some weeks ago where he'd raked up 24 mins of deco on air, on this setup that really isn't suited for anything like this. Obviously, he ran low on gas by the end of his deco but managed to surface well. He made the point for himself to only allow a 15 min TTS on dives from then on. With this in mind I should have been more vigilant in the planning I was going to do. [3rd mistake]
We'd plan to dive to max 40m when the boat drops us. With a TTS of 15 mins as Frank suggested. He'd be the limiting factor in regards to deco so I was ok with that. He would shoot an SMB at 12 meters and we'd do our deco from there. Should have decided to shoot from the bottom as we're quite close to the shipping lane. [4th mistake]
I asked him to indicate me when he was at half pressure (150bar) and when he hit the TTS we agreed upon. Procedure for losing each other would be to finish deco obligations separately and surface.
Dropping
We arrive at the dive site, some 100 meters from the shoreline and get ready to drop from the boat. I made my final checks on the CCR and got ready to do the backward roll from the boat, all good. Someone on the boat reminded me to inflate my wing. I hadn't inflated my wing... wtf. I still don't know why I didn't catch that myself. Perhaps because I was still a bit tired, a lot of things going on on the boat, I don't know? But I do know I'd have sunk as a rock if I'd jumped being so overweighted in my wetsuit. [5th mistake]
Dive itself
We get into the water, team up and attach a buddy line. I know, don't get me started on the buddy line.. I'm not a big fan of this but it's a thing that's used in the organisation of my diving club and Frank wanted to use it. So I attach it to my right arm to at least avoid any possible entanglement with my bailout. Once we're at the bottom on a slope at 20m we find our way gently deeper to 30m and eventually 40, all well. After 5 mins or so at 40 I start heading back North to get back in the direction of the slope of the shoreline which is away from the shipping lane. I get the impression that Frank is swimming quite hard as if he's trying to find the slope back to the shallows. He started swimming a bit ahead of me and the buddy line was yanked. At this point I get a bit concerned so I check on him, both pressure and TTS. He's at half pressure (150bar) and his TTS is at 16 mins. I indicate him that it's time to start ascending in open water.
Ascent
While ascending I notice I'm really having a bit of struggle with my buoyancy. Being so overweighted I have to vent large amounts, not really used to this. My trim which is usually on spot in my drysuit is now ridiculously bad, I just can't manage to stay horizontal at all. The heavy jetfins were probably not helping here. Sucks to dive like this, but I try to make due.
At 12 meter I ask Frank what his deco status is. I couldn't make head nor tail of his hand signals so I asked him to show me his computer. He accidentally pressed a button and we went through some screens. I still didn't know what his ceiling was. Mine was at 6 meters, like 2 mins or so. So I indicate to him that he's in control and heads to the right depth. Turns out his ceiling was also 6 meters. He's quite focused on his computer and has some trouble maintaining his depth. At the same time, I'm struggling as well. Now less with holding depth but more with my handicapped seahorse / standing trim. At 12 meter, he didn't deploy his SMB as he was too busy with his buoyancy and deco obligation. I should have raised my SMB at this point. There was no visual reference at all. And good chance we were already drifting in the direction of the shipping lane. [6th mistake]
Low diluent
While moving up to 6 meters I notice on my dil SPG that I'm running very low, 20 bars left. I wasted all of that dil trying to get my buoyancy right in the shallows. I know that going from 6m to the surface would only benefit it, no need for extra inflation, but in the back of my mind I started to become really concerned with being so overweighted...
Now that we're at 6 meters, Frank's correct deco ceiling, I make the decision to send my SMB up. I unpack the SMB, take the double ender of the spool and clip it away. It's an SMB with inflation nipple, instinctively I reach for my drysuit inflator, which is tucked under by belt. But considering the low DIL I abort that thought quickly. So the alternative is my bailout inflator. I reach back but can't find it by hand. It's between the regulator and my side. Why can't I locate it? I didn't want to deal with a loose hanging bailout and ready to go SMB in the other hand but ok... Reach back to unclip the bottom clip of the bailout to bring it forward and find the inflator. The clip is stuck, completely... It's a clip that can go just around the bottom bar of the JJ stand and can only be properly opened when perpendicular to the stand. I should have replaced that thing a long time ago! [7th mistake]
I check my DIL SPG, it's indicating 10bar but might have well been close to 0. Frank has no idea about this and showing a DIL SPG would make him none the wiser as he's not familiar with a rebreather.
I'm severely overweighted, I have that unfurled SMB in the other hand with no way of inflating it. What the f*** do I do? At that point I felt too many things already didn't go to plan and I made the call to head for the surface and not spend another single second trying to fix the situation. An irrational decision driven by my concern over not being able to inflate anything at this point. It would be the easy fix... So I indicated to Frank that my deco was clear and that I'd be heading up. I removed the buddy line and went for the surface. [8th mistake]
Keeping an extra close eye on my PP02. Once on the surface I checked my surroundings first, thank God no boats nearby. And inflated my wing orally to the max.
At that time I didn't have the reflex to switch to my bailout as my loop was still perfectly fine. What I should have done in hindsight is stick together with Frank, switch to my bailout regulator and inflate the SMB orally. Being on open circuit would have given me the option to orally inflate the wing if needed as well. I pondered this thought very briefly but instead opted for the easy way out by just surfacing, a selfish decision.
Boat/SMB incident
A rib boat of some other divers nearby spotted me without SMB within a minute and rushed over, those things are speedy. I explained them that I had lost all of my DIL, wasn't able to inflate the SMB and headed for the surface due to concerns over inflation. Mentioned that I didn't have any deco obligation but that my buddy Frank was still finishing his. But where's Frank? No SMB locating him at this point.
One of the boats of my diving club notices me with the other boat and heads over to me. In this line of sight between me and that boat heading over there were some bubbles coming up, indicating where Frank was. We started shouting to alarm the boat heading over that there was still a diver over there (without SMB, relatively shallow mind you). There was no way for the captain of that boat to see those bubbles as the driving position is all the way in the back and there's cabin in the line of sight. So he runs over the bubbles and by that time put the boat in reverse. At that same unfortunate moment Frank's SMB was coming up, got sucked into the prop and was mangled right away. [9th mistake]
I swim over to the boat and the captain asks me why I'm here alone, with no SMB, where's Frank? I told him that I had to come up without because I was low on dil and had issues with inflating. Frank was finishing his deco. At that point it's clear that there's an SMB in the prop. It's hanging out. So he asks me to check it and try to cut it loose. Before I start any of that (paranoid as I am) I ask him multiple times to make sure the engine is turned off and that it won't be turned on by accident in any case. I didn't know at that point that he was alone on the boat... He assured me it was safe and I cut that SMB loose.
At this point I had half the SMB in my hand with the line still attached and the other half wrapped around the prop. There was some weight to it so I presumed Frank was still holding the other side. At this point I'm wondering, do I hold on to that thing or not? Somehow I got the idea in my head that Frank might have been hit by the boat, tangled in the line and this would be the only way of finding him back. There were still bubbles coming up, so we assumed he's fine and made the decision to let it go and focus on cutting loose the rest of the SMB in the prop so we'd get the boat moving again. I passed him my unfurled empty SMB and bailout after quite some fiddling with that annoyingly stuck clip and climbed aboard.
A couple minutes later Frank popped up, alive and well with his reel in his hands and half an SMB.
He knew something was wrong when the reel kept unrolling. He finished the dive with a warning on his computer on the deco but without any issues. Little later I stepped from the boat that picked me up onto my original one, some people were offering some assistance as this wasn't a trivial thing to do due to the way the boats are build, but I was in no mood to receive help. So evidently, I lost my grip on the slippery handle and fell backwards with the rebreather on my back. I Luckily I managed to land it on the stand. Proves the JJ is quite robust, not a single dent. Not accepting help when moody... falling. Guess I deserved that one. [10th mistake]
Why am I writing this all down?
I've learned a lot from this dive and there are quite a bit of things that I'll improve in future dives. Might add them below at a later time, took me quite a bit of time to write this up.. It might be useful to anyone else, especially the CCR part. Posted it here since I've read a lot of other stories to learn from.
On the other hand, the captain of the boat that picked me up was clueless on everything that happened before it. So this might serve him as a nice story to read
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