My weekend
I faced Fraser on descent and settled myself down for the dive ahead, but quickly realised that the third member of our team was no longer with us. Not feeling that concerned I signalled to Fraser that we should start a methodical search and it didn’t take long to find our buddy - but he was face down and unresponsive on the bottom.
He was clearly breathing but did not respond when I tapped him - so I went behind him and started to lift him to the surface. Unfortunately, I could not reach round twin 12s sufficiently to keep his regulator in and we had moved only a couple of metres when he spat it out.
I felt dreadful at this point…had I killed him? When we eventually surfaced, his eyes were staring accusingly at me through his mask - and then he grinned. “OK, let me show you how it should be done, come on Fraser, you’re the body this time”
Welcome to Dive 1, day three of the Frank Bruce (e-aquanauts) school of rescue diving - I have spent the last two weekends doing an IANTD rescue course, and Saturday found us at Stoney Cove with Fraser along as willing helper/victim. Tech 1 requires divers to be rescue, medic and O2 certified. The IANTD course is, I understand, a new course. So I thought a write up would be helpful to others considering training.
After a bit of experimentation when I found that I could raise a diver in twins more easily from the front (keeping that all important reg in place), the dive started for real. We went down the cliff and out to the Stanegarth. Fraser got a bit disorientated and when I went to assist, he came at me for air.
I donated and, as I did, Frank asked for my mask. Not that concerned (we have trained to guide blind divers) I held my hand out for Fraser to assist me and quickly found myself being guided. My hand was put on the shot line, which struck me as a bit bizarre, as we should be able to do a direct ascent but hey ho…deal with what you have.
We started to ascend and after a while I was given my mask back and put it on and cleared it. The first thing I saw was Fraser … also without a mask!
Frank halted our ascent at 10 metres and took us back to the deck- I couldn’t get my mask completely clear, and Fraser was having similar problems. Frank encouraged Fraser to swim off…which given the way we dive he was very reluctant to do. When he did, Frank stopped me from following until there was a fair distance between us and then signalled that I was OOA. We had been told not to take lights on the dive so I had a fair swim before I could attract Fraser’s attention but when he saw me he was spot on with the donation.
Then, what do you know, Frank asked for my mask again. This time there was no shot line and we started an ascent, before getting masks back (yup…Fraser had lost his again as well). This time we could clear them … It turns out Frank had intentionally given us each the wrong mask back first time. He signalled to me to ascend to six metres and we did (I was still on Fraser’s long hose) and at the 6m stop he cut the drill. Frase and I grinned at each other - it’s nice to be stretched and find you can cope - and laughed even more when we looked over and saw Frank doing his paperwork, trimmed out at 6 metres, in his wetnotes.
Back on the surface, Fraser was told to be tired and so I towed him in and de-kitted him in the water. I found that despite all the tales to the contrary, getting someone out of a one piece harness is not that hard and with practice should be quite quick.
Frank then explained how regulators work and the various techniques for breathing off failing ones. Remembering Garf’s thread about when the diaphragm in his reg bent over, so it delivered water not air, I was a little concerned when Frank completely removed the diaphragm from his reg and told me that I would be breathing from it whilst swimming during the next dive. It wasn’t the most pleasant of experiences but it was do-able (using the purge button to force air through the water) and a useful skill to have.
Other failures were practiced including free flowing regs, blown o rings on deco bottles - all good experience. Frank then indicated that he had lost a weight which he then instructed me to find.
A circular search using a spool found it quite quickly. Frank excelled himself during this, turning off my argon bottle, unclipping the tail of my stage, unclipping and hiding Fraser’s pressure gauge, and throwing an OOA on us in the middle of it. Given that on the Friday, when I joined AK and Frank for a dive at Stoney, Frank had got me to swap to my back up reg, turned it off, and then scootered off to a safe distance, I suppose I should have been expecting this
Delighted to be reunited with his weight Frank swam off, through the blockhouse and then spectacularly “died” in front of me… ending up on his back with his legs in the air. Fraser tried to get Frank’s legs down while I tried to lift him. It proved to be bloody hard work, hampered by my stage getting in the way but we got him to the surface this time - and I have the bruises to prove it. AV on the surface was bloody hard, although certainly hampered by the course environment. It will require practice as will many of the skills introduced over the three days if they are to be fluent and dependable upon in a real incident.
At the end of the weekend, Frase and I got to do a dive together, we took it in turn to carry both Ali 80s which I found to be much much easier than I thought (until I swam through the Stanegarth… I think I need to lose some weight - it was a bit of a squish!)
I was having fun until Fraser sprang an out of air on me and then ASKED FOR MY MASK! Bugger it…he’s clearly learned too much from Frank. We did a really nice ascent this time, learning that it is quite important to clip off the blind diver’s torch…right hand being used for guidance, left hand needed to dump air…torch just gets in the way and is of course no use to the diver who is blind.
On the surface, Fraser turns out to have had a complete suit flood (from a burst wrist seal). We have surfaced the far side of the stanegarth and his lips are going blue and he is shaking. So whilst he continues to fin, I tow him in to get him there a little quicker. For the first time that day, I am pleased that it is baking hot and once he gets out of his kit he warms up and tells me repeatedly to stop fussing.
So am I a rescue diver now… well I hold the cert but the ability to be dependable in a rescue scenarion is clearly so much more than that. These new skills will require practice and can be built upon as we go - for instance, it’s all very well establishing bouyancy for an unconsious diver at the surface on their wing or drysuit but what if they are OOA. So I don’t think I can say I am a rescue diver… only that I have taken the first step on the road and will do my damndest now to continue the journey
Course standards if you are interested are found at http://www.iantd.com/standards/2001/RecDiver.htm#14
