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Hi Mr White,
It’s really hard to say how long when we don’t have your SAC rate. Being new and a little apprehensive about your abilities will increase air consumption. I think your doing the correct thing and staying shallow to get your buoyancy in check. Go down to 15’ and see if you can get your buoyancy stable to where when you take a breath you ascend slightly and when you exhale you descend slightly. This takes practice but when you can achieve it at 15 ft move to a deeper depth and practice there. You should relax and focus on good smooth breathing. Make sure you don’t hit your BC inflation button to long when making adjustments. Once you get a few dives in and become familiar with the equipment things will come easier. Make sure your buddy watches you so they can make recommendations on your trim if there’s an issue there.
Welcome to the forum and the great underwater world.
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Thanks Eric. Regarding Boyancy, I am good with that. I think I just need to ‘let it go’ when it comes to descending while emptying the BCD ..... I can raise or lower myself otherwise quite well. Will see how it goes tomorrow... again, thanks for your comments. Guess I’m just looking for validation.
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You need to remember and keep in mind that the air BCD expands as you ascend. The closer to the surface you get, the faster the ascent. That’s why you were unable to stop when you involuntarily started rising on you second dive. At shallow depths, this usually isn’t a problem, but could become a major one and cause you harm if it happens at depth during a lengthy dive. You actually need to bleed off air as you ascend to maintain the same level of buoyant air in you BC. The less air you have in your BCD at depth, the better off you’ll be. You may find you can reduce the amount of weight you carry, also. When I first started, I was carrying about 18 lbs in fresh water, but was having to fill my BC with a lot of air. I had good bouyancy, but I was susceptible to sudden rises like you are talking about. I was also using a lot of air due to the drag I was creating in the water. I started reducing the amount of weight I carried and am now down to 10 lbs with my configuration. My SAC rate has gone down dramatically and I can move about in the water column as I want without fear of rocketing to the surface.
I’m also rather perplexed at your saying it would have required a lot of unnecessary work to stop your ascent. How so? I don’t see how pressing the purge button on the inflator would be unnecessary work. And simpler still, most modern BCD inflator hoses have a cable attached to the shoulder dump inside the hose so that all you have to do is pull on the hose to release air.
Anyway, as Eric said, welcome to the wonderful world of diving. You’ll get past this (or should, anyway) and you’ll be the better diver for it. At least you recognize a problem and are willing to work on it.
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Gregg, thank you for your response. I will need to read this a few times in order to understand all of what you explained. You did a great job. In regards to what I perceived as ‘too much work to regain my depth’ it was what I left out that explains ... I realized that I was not as calm as I should have been, and that pushed me to consider coming up .... so it all worked out. I need to relax at being comfortable.... vs working on getting comfortable and relaxing .... thank you so much for your response .... I really appreciate it.
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My dude, ascending from a depth of 60 feet to the surface would bring a huge risk of getting DCS. You skipped a safety stop and probably ascended faster than 1 foot per second. I’m sure it wouldn’t have been horrible DCS. But still, quite possible you could get it.
If you didn’t get it, then it was most likely either luck, or because you weren’t at 60 feet depth for very long at all.
Your “comfort” in the water is of secondary importance to your actual safety and proper procedures. What happens if you feel very uncomfortable inside of a wreck? Will you panic, run into a sharp stick, take your reg out and drown? Or will you ACCEPT the discomfort, and calmly tell yourself “ok, I’m uncomfortable, but so what? I need to follow the protocol.”
What you should’ve done is immediately deflated your BCD completely by both your deflator valve and emergency dump valve with your other free hand, then once that was done, go headfirst and kick yourself back down to where you were.
Ideally, you want to have proper neutral buoyancy where you neither float nor sink. I used to be the opposite, I liked to sink slightly and kick up. I had to learn to use less weight, and in general maintain neutral buoyancy and only kick horizontally with proper trim.
It’ll take practice to get good, like any sport or hobby but ultimately you need to make sure you don’t ascend to the surface like that again. It’s bad news waiting to happen. And some people who had unknown heart conditions have actually unfortunately died doing exactly that.
Even when I’m doing a 35 foot dive, I ascend 1 foot every 2 seconds or less and do my 3 min safety stop. And I’m not averse to risk, I do cave diving, but you should never intentionally do something that could cause you problems. If you’re gonna go, have it be by an equipment malfunction or a shark or some sh^t lol. Don’t cause your own injury/death home boy
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Thanks to everyone for your comments. They all apply, and I am going to slow down, relax and focus on the task at hand, which will improve my safety as well as everyone else’s.
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Greg has some good points, about the fact that the air expands as you go up, so sometimes when you start ascending (Going up), It creates a chain reaction where you keep rising.
I’m in experience rescue diver and this doesn’t happen to me often, but occasionally if I get distracted and start rising, what I do is I immediately do 2 things:
1) I grab my deflate valve, hold it high and deflate myself until I stop rising and start descending
2) immediately after I’ve gotten a hold of my deflate valve and started letting air out, I immediately grab my dive computer/watch (I just hold my right hand to my face and read it, as it’s on my wrist) and I carefully monitor my depth.
If I start descending, then I will kick and let a little air back in as I kick to maintain depth. I also will use air in my lungs to help maintain depth until I stabilize. An almost full breath helps you rise... empty lungs helps you descend (go lower).
WHAT NOBODY IS MENTIONING IS THAT THIS SIMPLY TAKES PRACTICE TO GET GOOD AT. It also takes mental memory... so doing it a few times on many different days will help you master it.
Ideally, you also want to focus on making sure your WEIGHTING is correct so that when you deflate your BCD, you are just barely neutrally buoyant on the surface (at eye level or forehead level with a full breath). Then you can blow your air out of lungs, pull yourself down with your arms, and bam; you’re neutrally buoyant right off the bat. To get this perfected you need to figure out your right amount of weight. This can change if you’ve gotten fatter or skinnier since your last dive, or if you’re wearing a different wetsuit.
You also need to focus on staying very calm- like a surgeon, almost. Think clinically and logically, be calm but think quickly. Do not ever panic. If you think intelligently and calmly, focus on what you’re doing and always think 2 steps ahead too, then you’ll be fine.
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1. I’d be willing to bet you are carrying too much lead.
2. Air moving from one side of the BC to the other will not affect buoyancy.
Use the weight calculator on this website to get starting point for how much weight you need.
divebuddy.com/calculator/weight.aspx
When you’re done practicing, run the tank to 500 psi (at the surface, bleed the air out by pushing the button on the second stage) and start removing weight a little at a time and try to descend after each time you take a little weight out. Now practice on a second tank with that amount of weight. From there on, every time you dive, write in your log book what equipment you used, how much lead you used, and if it was too much or not enough or just right.
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