Paul Kidson

Nearly gave up diving today, really went wrong for us and I came the nearest to panic that I ever have.

Started the day with a dive planned on the Kronprinz Willhelm to 36m for 35 minutes and the relevant deco stops to go with it. We were to be doing some small penetrations to practice line laying skills.

It started to go bad before we even hit the water.  With fifteen minutes to go till we got to the wreck Rob had yet to get the gas in his twins sorted.  He had too high a blend of nitrox for the depth we were going to which could potentially give him O2 exposure issues.  He hadn’t set his stage up and also hadn’t sorted out his bird nested reel from yesterday.  When we did get into the water there was a hell of a current running that made a s-drill nearly impossible and we didn’t do it particularly smoothly.

We dropped down the shot and the current was still just as bad.  I signalled to Rob that I wanted him to lead the dive but he didn’t really respond so after a minute or so of just hovering there looking at each other I took the lead and dropped down to the seabed.  The current was still strong and I was struggling to make any headway, these new fins are nowhere near as powerful as the Scubapro splits they have replaced.  After five minutes I had to stop and grab hold of some wreckage to try and get my breath back.  Carried on but was making no headway at all.  I signalled to Rob that I wasn’t ok, that I was out of breath but didn’t recieve any response apart from his now standard ok signal back.

At this point I was really uncomfortable, I felt out of breath and alone and a bit scared and I wanted out!  It felt like I couldn’t get enough gas through my reg which is ridiculous really as it flows something stupid a minute if you need it to.  I signalled to Rob to ascend.  Despite having a perfectly good slate, timer and stage of 50% we still managed to get to to the top of the hull at 16m without even thinking of doing any stops or a gas switch.  At 16m Finbar tried to get us to drop down 5m and run our plan but my brain wouldn’t even contemplate it, I still hadn’t quite got my breath back and could only think about getting back on the boat.  I hadn’t even realised he had come up with us! After a couple of minutes Rob popped a SMB up and we went to 6m.  I didn’t know how long to sit there for.  My computer was in gauge mode as was Robs, I figured that with twelve minutes at 36m I’d be able to do tem minutes deco and probably be ok.  Still didn’t think to switch to 50% or even to ask Finbar how long we needed, he did have two VR3′s strapped to his wrists after all..

By pure luck we broke the surface as one of the VR3s had cleared and were soon back on Valkyrie.  Marks SMB was up by this time and he was back on the boat a few minutes later.

We talked it over with a cup of tea, worked out what had gone wrong and how to stop it happening again but at this exact moment in time I’ve lost all my confidence, I hope that when I jump in tomorrow I will feel good and enjoy it…  I felt overwhelmed on this dive, I knew I had a problem and just wanted to be able to rely on my buddy to get us out of there but due to narcosis he was in a blissful state of unawareness.

Things we did wrong…

• Preparation.  Even when it’s your buddy and not you that’s left it all to the last moment it can still affect your mood.
• s-drill at 6m.  With the current as it was we should have done it on the wreck where we could have found shelter.
• Communication.  Non existent, Rob narked into oblivion!
• Stops and gas switch.  We still had plenty of gas and time but neither of us thought to run our stops or to switch gases above 21m.  In my defence I was pretty spooked but Rob should of thought of it I suppose?

Poor Mark, swims forwards to try and find a suitable hole to swim into and returns to find everyone has buggered off!