Well, this past weekend, 23-24 August 2008, I went up with my favorite dive shop,
An Underwater Connection NJ to assist with Open Water student dives at
Dutch Springs, PA. It was an interesting weekend to say the least. I gain a lot of valuable experience with the students,
Derek, Marcie, and Slav. They had completed all of their dives by early Sunday afternoon. Here is where my tale turns interesting.
Clay , my instructor, had gained the assistance of a couple of individuals to assist with my own Open water evaluation to complete my PADI Assistant Instructor Course. He enlisted the help from Bob Drudy, an AI for an
An Underwater Connection NJ, and Dennis, from
Divetrainers. I had a rescue scenario to do. I did my brief to both the rescuer, Robert, and the victim,
Dennis. I gave Clay sometime with them so he could brief them on his “expectations”.
We move down into the water. Dennis moved out a little away from the dock and proceeded down to 20 ft and hovered. I told Robert to go when I saw Dennis was ready. We proceeded down. Robert acted like he was having proper with his ears. I stopped his descent and he equalized. We continued to descend. Dennis turned around and started flailing his arms. Bob moved toward him they exchange signals indicating that Dennis was out of air and Bob would share air with him. At this point, Dennis spit his regulator out of his mouth and Bob put his Octo in upside down. I could see the Dennis wasn’t really getting any air. I approached and turned the Octo right side up. At this point, Bob spit out his regulator and grabbed Dennis’ whistle and attempted to blow it under water. It was quite amusing to see the bubble coming out of it. I grabbed Bob’s Regulator and pushed it back into his mouth. Every time I got one regulator in the other would spit his out. All I could think was I was I was going to really hurt these two when this was over. The divers who were observing said I looked like an old time operator trying to answer phone calls.
Robert decided that it was time to get to the surface. He grabbed Dennis’s legs and head to the surface. Dennis decided to let all of the air out of his BCD. So I have Bob going up and Dennis with his Finsup and his Hammer Down. I couldn’t pass that up!! I got Bob stopped and Dennis back to a Heads up position. We made a smooth ascent the last couple of feet to break the surface. Bob and Dennis just started to laugh like crazy. All I could say was,” YOU’RE SO FIRED”. Everyone that had been observing were laughing also.
We got out and debriefed the dive. I had no problem finding the things that went wrong, but the only positive thing I could say was, “Smooth Descent”. It was definitely a learning experience for me. I just wish we would have thought to bring a camera person along for the dive!