OkiMike(Offline)

DAY 2

I had put it at the front desk to have a wake-up call like the previous day, but apparently the person on staff that night didn’t get the message and I never got the call. As a result, I walked into the restaurant area next to the beach about 30 minutes late where the team was waiting for me.

I grabbed a quick bite to eat and Gideon began by going over the day’s diving schedule. He said that since we were already running a bit behind and he didn’t want us to get in the water as late as we had done the day before, we would all meet at the fill station in about 10 minutes, analyze our gases, check our gear and then go through some more dry-run skills in addition to going over anything else that we might have questions about.

I was real keen on going over proper line-drills considering how I’d done them the day before and Gideon obliged. It was a chance for all of us to come to agreement on tying off the line, choosing placements, proper touch contact in low-visibility situations and how to react when one or more divers find themselves off the line. Considering that a thorough understanding of these skills would be better found in GUE’s Cave 1 course, Gideon tried to give us the most useful information possible while pushing on when the conversation became too detailed (which it did more than once since the other two divers had already taken cave courses and wanted clarification on procedural issues where they might have been taught differently).

We ended up going longer than planned with these drills again simply because we had so many questions for Gideon, but Gideon pushed us to take our lunch break as quickly as possible and then gear up and be in the water before 1:00 pm.

(Dive 1) – 2:18 pm

Gideon and the fabulous Mike Taylor once again dropped to 9 meters to tie off the upline. Once we saw the bag on the surface, we were to again drop down to 9 meters, get situated and make an ascent to 6 meters where we would do valve drills, OOG drills and, this time, switch to our deco bottles.

Somehow *wink wink* during the valve-drill portion, Michael’s primary hose had gotten wrapped around his manifold since he hadn’t secured it around his light canister earlier and when Paul requested gas, there was a flurry of activity as Michael fought to figure out what had happened and get it all sorted out. While I watched on, I did a quick check of my own and reminded myself to always do a hose feel-check both at the surface and as I’m descending through the shallows on my way to a deep dive. The AoD may strike at any time! (The same can be said about valve “flow” checks which I do frequently throughout all dives now out of paranoia).

In the later video review of this and previous dives, Gideon noted four very important things that he wanted us to keep in mind:

1.) Trim – No matter what happens it comes naturally for us to break out of a horizontal position because of stress and task-loading. A good diver breaks him/herself of this practice and has their head pinned back against the valves and back arched at all times.
2.) Hand signals must be clear and deliberate. No more limp-wristed half-attempted “OK” signals or “let’s move up” signals. Anyone giving a signal at any time needs to be clear and authoritative so that the person on the other end would have to second-guess or, worse, mistake what we were attempting to communicate. That said, the person watching shouldn’t be quick to turn away and could even go so far as to assume that the signaling diver will tell him something unexpected. Perhaps the diver using the signals wishes to convey some additional information or wants to make a correction. Giving your buddy your full attention when he is communicating with you until you are sure he is completely done is wise.
3.) Stay clean. When moving from one task to another, for example when you clip off your light in preparation for moving to your deco bottle, tidy up! Those loose cords are a big entanglement hazard, especially if they happen in conjunction with poor trim or buoyancy and will undoubtedly cause confusion in the event that you have to do something else quick at the same time, like share the long hose. This isn’t a rodeo and we’re not catching cattle, so keep the cords tucked away!
4.) Always move in a slow and deliberate fashion. Rushing through steps, like when verifying your deco bottle takes up more time in the long run because you’ll invariably forget something and have to use more precious time to go back and verify it.
(Dive 2) – 2:55 pm

Once again, I had the reel foisted upon me for this dive. “That’s alright, it can only make me stronger,” I reasoned. In a way, I suppose it did as it “only” took me a minute and a half to tie off the line this time. (Which reminds me, I wonder if they have need-based scholarships for the Cave 1 class…)

Anyway, we were supposed to do much like the line-dives during the previous day only this time we were to use the rule of thirds. In other words we HAD to come back to the upline so it would be crucial for us to pay careful attention our gas management, depth and time as we’d need to be able to come back maskless and with 10 bar leftover in our tanks. *grin*

After tying off and checking on my buddies, we took off parallel to the beach once again, Michael on my left and Paul on my right.


(Image: Gideon staying behind to check out my secondary tie which I had made on a rock so small that he was able to pick it up with one hand and slip his fingers between the lines.)

Once Gideon caught up, he spotted another loose long hose on Michael’s rig. Michael, sensing the AoD at work behind his back, stopped to assess his hoses and get them straightened out. Meanwhile, I made a wrap around another rock so we could head a bit shallower as our current course had dropped about 3 meters. I soon made another wrap but must have screwed it up even more since Gideon took the reel and showed me how to make a proper wrap with the line properly laying in the direction we planned to head.

At a little over 8 minutes into the dive, Michael signaled for us to turn around and I found the nearest boulder to tie off and leave the reel at. After what I considered to be my first truly excellent tie-off, Gideon came into view and told me to unwrap it all and take it out with me. Again, looking back, I can only surmise that I wanted to tie it off because I knew that it would be easier to manage without it in light of the failures that were sure to come. But according to our dry-run practices, leaving the reel behind should only be done in situations where we are near or at full penetration and there is a silt-out or some situation where our ability to make it back to the entrance with enough air might be compromised.

A couple of minutes into the return, the AoD visited Michael’s right post.


(Image: Michael’s right post explodes into a torrent of bubbles.)

As I held onto the line, Paul came over to help Michael out. I held position as I was told to do but, distracted by the failure, Paul and Michael began to drift further down the line without realizing that I wasn’t with them. I was busy again trying to, you guessed it, tie off the line so I could forget about it! After Paul communicated that Michael’s right post was broken, they continued on down the line becoming smaller and smaller on the horizon.


(Image: Me demonstrating how NOT to stay with the team)

Gideon, realizing what had happened, kicked back towards me and told me to signal OOG. While my teammates were trying to find out where the hell I’d gone and why Mike Taylor and Gideon had also disappeared into the direction they’d just came from, all of a sudden they saw my light bouncing back and forth in rapid motion. Of course, I was in the biggest position to take the blame for not continuing to reel in the line once I saw that Paul was managing the problem. Add to that the fact that they were both drifting away from me busy handling a problem while all I had to do was sit there. I further made the mistake that many divers do when they signal OOG but don’t actually kick towards the donating diver like they are really out of gas! I thought the joke was on my buddies for getting away from me while I “defended” the line, but the joke was really on me because had that been a real OOG situation, I would have been struggling to catch up to them with no air in my lungs! The lesson was clear: stop the reel and keep the line taut in a failure situation, but keep up with the buddies if the situation requires it because of currents, etc. even if it means continuing to bring in the reel. Buddy separation will inevitably cause greater problems for the entire team than a single diver losing his right post.

Anyway, after Paul had given me his primary, we turned around to see Michael holding the line without a mask. Paul then reached out to hold onto Michael’s arm to let him know we were there as Michael fished his spare out of his right pocket. He must have sensed that our time was winding down quickly because he began kicking down the line ahead of us while “O-ing” it. Paul signaled for Michael to drop back and take up a wing formation and, as he did this, the AoD saw that pesky loose long hose. Bam! Around the manifold it went! Michael was, of course, able to feel the presence of the supernatural surrounding his manifold and jerked around to see what was going on but still didn’t think to feel for the location of his long hose. Some failures are just funny and it didn’t matter that I was sharing Paul’s gas and was about to lose my mask to the AoD; seeing Michael’s uncooperative hose made me laugh.

So there I was between Paul and Michael when the AoD claimed my mask. Soon after replacing it, we were back on the upline and Michael ran the deco ascent. We were on a strict schedule and wanted to get to our deco bottles at the 6 meter stop. Paul was ascending a bit beneath us and Michael called him up. Meanwhile, Michael and I kept drifting behind Paul and out of his line of sight. This, no doubt, frustrated him since he couldn’t see any of the signals going on behind his back.

At the 6-meter stop, being the OOG diver, I switched first, then Michael, then Paul. As we were higher in the water column, the current picked up and I began to slip behind the other divers. As I struggled to kick my way back to the line we were all supposed to face, the AoD claimed my mask. Alas, my backup was gone and so Gideon instructed Paul to put my hand on the upline. (In retrospect, I’m secretly thankful to Gideon for giving me the majority of maskless scenarios since, for some strange reason, it was my biggest worry prior to the class beginning. But when it actually happened I was quite amazed at how comfortable I was and how nice it was to have buddies, all with spare masks and guiding hands! Oh, and the warm water of the Philippines surely didn’t hurt…).

(Dive 3) – 4:04 pm

Our plan on the third dive was to go back down and follow the line out to the reel, pick it up and continue on. However, during our surface interval, the upline and SMB had drifted with us a good 20+ meters downcurrent! So the five of us spent a good portion of our gas kicking against the current trying to reach the original starting point where our reel-line had been tied off. To our delight, the reel used to shoot the SMB has been clearly dragged along the sandy ocean floor and left us an easy-to-follow snail-trail on the ocean floor.


(Image: “Upline, oh upline, wherefore art thou?)

We eventually reached our original spot with a little gas to spare and, once the upline was secured, we continued down the reel-line in our line-abreast formation. After continuing on a bit, despite the planned scenario portion of our dive having just begun, Michael realized that we were already at our determined turn-pressure so we turned around. Then, WHAM! my right post went kablooey. I signaled to my buddies, turned off the right post, switched regs and then signaled for Paul to come and, as only Gideon can say, “look at my bubbling”. (If you ever have the chance to talk to him in person, have him say these words for you in his wonderful Singaporean accent!) Anyway, Paul determined it was broken; I stayed on my backup and then signaled to Michael that my right post was gone.

We then continued on, but no sooner had we turned then my mask was removed by the strong ocean currents (no doubt fanned by the AoD)! After replacing it, Paul was suddenly OOG and Michael came across from the opposite side and donated. He had forgotten to “unwind” his light cord from the long hose though, so Gideon came down from on-high and reminded him.

At this point, with Paul out of gas, I should have sandwiched him in the middle but I wasn’t thinking clearly. Suddenly, Michael in the middle lost his mask to a”large family of passing tuna”. Knowing that time was of the essence, we all continued on back towards the exit while he donned his trusty backup mask. Soon thereafter we were once again on the upline. Right after Michael signaled for me to run deco and while Paul was breathing Michael’s long hose, Michael’s right post exploded in a torrent of bubbles. It was an interesting dilemma because the default response to bubbling is to want to isolate the problem and shut off the post. However doing so would have eliminated Paul’s gas supply. We should have proceeded immediately to our bottle switch depth and, after everyone had safely been on deco gas, we could have reevaluated Michael’s right post further. But instead, we wasted a valuable minute or so at depth worrying about fixing a problem that would have lost its urgency only 3 meters above us.

Realizing this, we eventually did ascend and Paul was the first to switch. But then, rather than Michael switching, he shut off his primary instead and isolated at the manifold and called me over to inspect his bubbling right post. Michael and I were still on back gas and once again the prudent thing to do would have been to get on deco gas as soon as possible since Paul was already sucking his down. But we didn’t. Michael’s right post turned out to be unfixable. After make a quick adjustment to depth, he switched over to his deco bottle and I followed.

With so many failures it can be hard to keep track of team resources especially when we’ve removed a bit of the immediacy and are now sitting comfortably on deco gas. Looking back, I should have definitely done a mental check of what we had lost:

Paul – had lost all of his gas (and was still sitting on the “outside” of the wing formation—shame on me)

Michael – had lost his right post.

I – had lost my right post.

In this situation, if Paul had run out of deco gas, one of us would have had to donate our deco reg and switch to the backup around our neck. Thankfully it didn’t come to that. But it should have been on my mind.

(Dive 4) – 5:00 pm

Our final dive on Day 2 would be a toxing diver rescue simulation. For this, we headed up the beach to a sandy bottom about 6 meters in depth. Gideon ran through the drill with us using Mike Taylor as a guinea pig. We were to keep ourselves as horizontal as possible in the water while hovering over the backs of the toxing diver. We had to keep the regs in their mouths with hand supporting their heads to keep their airways open, turn them face-down if they were in a different position when we found them, and use their wing (not our own) to gradually take them to the surface while maintaining the above-mentioned characteristics. It was easier said than done and the biggest hassle was trying to keep everyone as horizontal as possible so we didn’t rocket to the surface.


(Image: Gideon isn’t impressed by our experimental tandem-diving formation.)

This skill was quite fun to practice and we all did reasonably well. Gideon made several comments on the surface to help us fix little things, but overall it was a successful (and short) dive.

We eventually meandered ashore, did our customary dip in the pool to rinse off our gear, and readied our gear for fills.

After a quick break to get cleaned up, we met again at the dinner table where we talked about the dives and then went over to the classroom for video review and the evenings lecture on bubble models and more deco theory. After class, we split our separate ways, some taking walks on the night beach and talking about the class, and all, eventually heading off to bed.