|
Diving Officer's Report
A great trip to Scapa has just taken
place. Many thanks to Sarah who organised
it and put up with the endless discussions
about buddy pairs, dive sites and the wind
( mainly Paul’s). I am very pleased to say
that we had no serious incidents and no
major equipment failure. There were a few
injuries – poor Stephen broke his foot,
got severely bitten by a scallop and bled
all over everyone and Richard went down
with something ( probably the result of
living in
France
too long). It was good to see everyone
using smbs effectively and I have never
seen such perfect buoyancy control on the
now-standard 3minute safety stops. The one
near-incident does suggest a lesson to be
learnt. Two buddy pairs were descending
the shot line, all fairly close to each
other. The second diver of the first pair
and the first of the second pair became
attached to each other. Not realising what
the problem was, they were both concerned
about strange affects on buoyancy. The
diver from the second pair attempted to
make herself more buoyant while being
pulled downwards. On reaching the wreck,
she realised she was hooked round the
other diver and freed herself. This made
her extremely positively buoyant and she
ascended very rapidly from about 15
metres, halting her ascent at 8m. Very
sensibly she gave herself a lengthy safety
stop and then aborted the dive.
Fortunately she had no ill-effects,
probably because of the ascent being at
the beginning of the dive when her
nitrogen loading was minimal. This could
have been much more serious later in a
dive or from a greater depth.
The lesson is…….avoid dangly bits. Loops
of cord, or even bungie, can easily become
hooked onto other divers or metal spikes
etc on wrecks. Try to make your kit as
streamlined as possible and don’t get too
close to other divers. I know it is
tempting to stay very close when the
visibility is poor, but be aware of the
risk of getting caught.
While we were in Scapa there was an
incident on one of the battleships and
again was to be learnt. Two divers
inadvertently penetrated deep inside the
wreck. The visibility was so poor that it
was only when they were deep inside that
they realised they were surrounded by
metal. The outcome was that one of the
divers used up his air trying to find his
way out and ended up doing a very rapid
ascent and missing deco stops. He spent
5hours in the recompression chamber. The
lesson….. always check that you can see
daylight. Never penetrate a wreck in low
visibility without the use of lines. The
silt gets easily kicked up and visibility
can be reduced to zero. If you lay a line
you can retrace your route and get back
out.
Apart from all that, we had a great time.
Thanks again Sarah.
Kate
|
