"The Domino effect"
Everyone gets caught up in their first dive incident sometime. Thankfully, my incident didn't have a serious outcome and no-one was injured - or were they? Read on....
It was our first day on our Red Sea trip. Our party was made up of novices either doing OW referrals or completing their AOWs on the trip. Two instructors were accompanying us on the trip for the courses. A small group of experienced BSAC/SAA club divers were also with us.
We completed our first checkout 12m max dive in the morning and although we'd all done buyancy checks, I for one had problems staying down near the end of the dive and found myself on the surface. Luckily, my girlfriend and buddy 'borrowed' a spare weight from a passing dive group and she got me down from the surface. I added another 3kg to the 10kg's on my weightbelt for the afternoon dive. This appeared a lot but as I was wearing my new 5mm two piece suit.
What happened on the second dive was that again was caught out by increasing buoyant Ali-tank as it emptied through the dive. I couldn't stay down and ended up on the surface. Unfortunately, no one in the group saw it happen as we were turning around a coral head into a very strong current at the time. My buddy was an inexperienced newly qualified OW with 6 dives who didn't even notice I was gone (to the surface) and continued diving with the group. (I was supposedly looking after him!). Later, my girlfriend spotted I was gone and signalled to the Diveguide. The Diveguide sent the party back to the boat as he went back to start an unsuccessful search for me. Meanwhile, I was on surface in 3-4foot swell due to the February winds in the RedSea some 200m's from the boat.
I signalled I was okay to the diveboat when they spotted me but couldn't swim back to the boat against the swell and high surface current. The diveguide had taken us out *with* the current so the rest of party had big struggle back to boat. One diver ran out of air and had to make a buoyant ascent and was was assisted on the surface by my buddy who redeemed himself. All got back on board and they then had to physical restrain my buddy who attempted to swim out to "save me". Once all were on board, the boat picked me up from were I had drifted some 300-400m's away. I was in no real danger of sinking as I was too buoyant !
Basically, the diveguide didn't appreciate the inexperience of group and he misjudged the current which was not running its typical north to south that day. Although I did a buoyancy check, the Ali tank really caught me out - that was my fault. My buddy was also relatively inexperienced as were many of the group.
Unfortunately, although I sank a bottle of spirits in the pub that night to console him and didn't blame him at all - I blamed myself for being under-weighted, but he never really forgave himself for leaving me behind. He happened to develop an ear infection the next day and didn't dive the rest of the holiday. I understand he never dived again.
Not a big incident in the scheme of things but highlights how a dive can fall apart, it just takes one domino to wobble and fall and the whole dive can fall apart rapidily. Many domino's were wobbling before the dive party even donned their kit in the boat before that dive.
I personally learnt more from the events of this dive than the sum of my previous dive training and I'll never forget it either. I said at the start that no-one got hurt, but maybe my buddy did! It really is a great shame the guy doesn't dive anymore.
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Page last updated 2 June 99.