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So, a guy with tons of experience goes for open water dive without a diving marker or diving alert device, decide to leave his dive-buddy and return to the beac

So, a guy with tons of experience goes for open water dive without a diving marker or diving alert device, decide to leave his dive-buddy and return to the beach by himself. Some other articles says he was a navy veteran. That would probably explain his overconfidence, as those are things that recreational and tec divers are explicitly trained not to do. Lots of diving accidents reports starts with someone being overconfident (ignoring the recommended safety limits or his personal limits), ignoring safety-checks and/or losing his diving buddy. I guess this is one of those. I like reading those kinds of reports because it shows how things can go wrong, even for experienced divers. And how to be prepared for those problems. It also shows that most diving accidents happens usually because of human error instead of equipment failure. The good thing: He's still alive. He returned to the diving spot a few years later (to take a picture for his "treading water" book) and he became a "Water Safety Ambassador" in NZ. And his history might serve as an example during diving safety classes.

jasonkester 9y ago
I did a month worth of diving in Dahab on the Red Sea a while back. Talking to the instructors and dive masters there, their big challenge is keeping the Israelis from killing themselves. Being just over the border in Egypt, they get a steady stream of young guys fresh out of the army who are accustomed to surviving lots of things and now want to go have some fun. So they nod along to the safety instruction on their "discover scuba" dive, then swim off over the lip to the 30M deep underwater caves filled with lion fish and opportunities for knife fighting. It doesn't surprise me that the guy in the story thought he could swim to the beach from a few hundred yards away.
gumby 9y ago
> Lots of diving accidents reports starts with someone being overconfident (ignoring the recommended safety limits or his personal limits), ignoring safety-checks and/or losing his diving buddy. I am not a diver but I have come close to losing my life three times in the backcountry. Each time I remember my overwhelming thought was "I have been an idiot". And, as you noted, each time: I was alone (or with my dog but no other human), and was overconfident both in gear and experience. Interestingly in two of the three cases my dog saved my life. Though I knew full well that Lassie is not a documentary, it always felt like I had someone with me.
- kornish 9y ago
  Would you be interested in detailing the times in which the dog saved you? Sounds fascinating (and lucky)!
  - danilocesar 9y ago
    +1 for getting more details =)
  - gumby 9y ago
    Actually not so much fascinating but rather mundane. Both were in the snow. The first time I went for a hike without checking the weather. I had a topo and compass but not a GPS (which I almost never carry anyway) and, as it was a day hike, no stove or any overnight supplies beyond a bottle of water. In the summer that's not really a problem (you can almost always survive overnight in summer without a problem even with no preparation, food or equipment, especially if it's not raining) but stupid and dangerous in the winter at altitude. I was wearing relatively lightweight "travel" gear because I expected to be sweating, not sitting still. In any case it began to snow heavily and I could not see any landmarks, much less my map. I tried dead reckoning to the trailhead but eventually came across my own snowshoe tracks as it began to become dark. Very scary. I was also frightened of stumbling into a lake or off a cliff, both which were relatively nearby. At some point the dog became fed up with my antics and just walked away, which he normally never does. Lacking any better plan I followed him and he walked pretty directly to the trailhead which turned out not to be that far away. The second was much more serious: again, I got a late start because of work and got into the wilderness around dark, not having checked the weather. I skied a bit but it's dangerous to travel at night, especially in the snow. I do have a special lightweight and compact rig I developed for sleeping below zero, but it requires some time and attention to set up. So I put up a tent (least I had brought one!) for me and the dog because I wanted out of the weather and was too tired to try to make a robust shelter, especially in the dark. Unfortunately the spot I chose was exposed and the winds were quite strong, pulling branches down and threatening to pull the tent (I had only anchored it to the snow). In the dark I had to get up, find a tree well, and dig a hole. I put my skis and my pack over the hole, dug a chair, and then spent a sleepless night with my dog. I opened his jacket and my jacket, sat on the dog pad and my sleeping pad, and wrapped my sleeping blanket around us with the dog blanket over the top. I put the dog's jacket under him. He sat up/stood up all night and kept me warm (most of the time I was hugging him). I was afraid to fall asleep and potentially freeze to death because the covering required continuous adjustment. When we dug out in the morning up my tent was gone (I eventually found it) and there were branches that had fallen where it had been, though who knows if they really would have been dangerous? At least it hadn't snowed much, though it was pretty cold. (One of my students managed to dig a shelter using only his skis when he was caught downhill after skiing out of bounds, but he did the digging before the sun went down, and was rescued in the morning. His ski gear was adequate for overnight in those conditions). The common thread here is that I was dumb, dumb, dumb and deserved to suffer. I prepare better when writing code than I did on these two trips: I was overconfident that my skills and experience would get me through. BTW my dog weighed almost 150 lbs (not much less than I do) with legs as long as mine. He had (he's since passed away) well over a thousand trail miles and was trained to stick with me regardless of distractions, which is why it was so shocking when he walked away. He only did that one other time, when a group of us were cutting a trail -- I assume he was bored and went back to camp in the hope of finding forgotten food. Oh yeah, he would also do it sometimes in the office if he thought someone might be eating a sandwich :-).
pc2g4d 9y ago
I'm curious how a dive buddy would have helped. Wouldn't that just have meant two people were in trouble, instead of one?

jasonkester 9y ago

I did a month worth of diving in Dahab on the Red Sea a while back. Talking to the instructors and dive masters there, their big challenge is keeping the Israelis from killing themselves. Being just over the border in Egypt, they get a steady stream of young guys fresh out of the army who are accustomed to surviving lots of things and now want to go have some fun. So they nod along to the safety instruction on their "discover scuba" dive, then swim off over the lip to the 30M deep underwater caves filled with lion fish and opportunities for knife fighting. It doesn't surprise me that the guy in the story thought he could swim to the beach from a few hundred yards away.

gumby 9y ago

> Lots of diving accidents reports starts with someone being overconfident (ignoring the recommended safety limits or his personal limits), ignoring safety-checks and/or losing his diving buddy. I am not a diver but I have come close to losing my life three times in the backcountry. Each time I remember my overwhelming thought was "I have been an idiot". And, as you noted, each time: I was alone (or with my dog but no other human), and was overconfident both in gear and experience. Interestingly in two of the three cases my dog saved my life. Though I knew full well that Lassie is not a documentary, it always felt like I had someone with me.

kornish 9y ago
Would you be interested in detailing the times in which the dog saved you? Sounds fascinating (and lucky)!
- danilocesar 9y ago
  +1 for getting more details =)
- gumby 9y ago
  Actually not so much fascinating but rather mundane. Both were in the snow. The first time I went for a hike without checking the weather. I had a topo and compass but not a GPS (which I almost never carry anyway) and, as it was a day hike, no stove or any overnight supplies beyond a bottle of water. In the summer that's not really a problem (you can almost always survive overnight in summer without a problem even with no preparation, food or equipment, especially if it's not raining) but stupid and dangerous in the winter at altitude. I was wearing relatively lightweight "travel" gear because I expected to be sweating, not sitting still. In any case it began to snow heavily and I could not see any landmarks, much less my map. I tried dead reckoning to the trailhead but eventually came across my own snowshoe tracks as it began to become dark. Very scary. I was also frightened of stumbling into a lake or off a cliff, both which were relatively nearby. At some point the dog became fed up with my antics and just walked away, which he normally never does. Lacking any better plan I followed him and he walked pretty directly to the trailhead which turned out not to be that far away. The second was much more serious: again, I got a late start because of work and got into the wilderness around dark, not having checked the weather. I skied a bit but it's dangerous to travel at night, especially in the snow. I do have a special lightweight and compact rig I developed for sleeping below zero, but it requires some time and attention to set up. So I put up a tent (least I had brought one!) for me and the dog because I wanted out of the weather and was too tired to try to make a robust shelter, especially in the dark. Unfortunately the spot I chose was exposed and the winds were quite strong, pulling branches down and threatening to pull the tent (I had only anchored it to the snow). In the dark I had to get up, find a tree well, and dig a hole. I put my skis and my pack over the hole, dug a chair, and then spent a sleepless night with my dog. I opened his jacket and my jacket, sat on the dog pad and my sleeping pad, and wrapped my sleeping blanket around us with the dog blanket over the top. I put the dog's jacket under him. He sat up/stood up all night and kept me warm (most of the time I was hugging him). I was afraid to fall asleep and potentially freeze to death because the covering required continuous adjustment. When we dug out in the morning up my tent was gone (I eventually found it) and there were branches that had fallen where it had been, though who knows if they really would have been dangerous? At least it hadn't snowed much, though it was pretty cold. (One of my students managed to dig a shelter using only his skis when he was caught downhill after skiing out of bounds, but he did the digging before the sun went down, and was rescued in the morning. His ski gear was adequate for overnight in those conditions). The common thread here is that I was dumb, dumb, dumb and deserved to suffer. I prepare better when writing code than I did on these two trips: I was overconfident that my skills and experience would get me through. BTW my dog weighed almost 150 lbs (not much less than I do) with legs as long as mine. He had (he's since passed away) well over a thousand trail miles and was trained to stick with me regardless of distractions, which is why it was so shocking when he walked away. He only did that one other time, when a group of us were cutting a trail -- I assume he was bored and went back to camp in the hope of finding forgotten food. Oh yeah, he would also do it sometimes in the office if he thought someone might be eating a sandwich :-).

pc2g4d 9y ago

I'm curious how a dive buddy would have helped. Wouldn't that just have meant two people were in trouble, instead of one?