Chanb77's Weblog

Thursday, July 26th, 2007 ~

Steve and I headed up to Morrison’s Quarry in Wakefield, QC. I’ve been practising using stage bottles, and Steve handed me his last night. We were going to practice back finning, air shares, and valve drills. We ventured out to the plane, to the tug boat, then down to the submarine, where we met up with Kevin and Jeremy, also working on skills. We milled around while JJ was deploying a bag, and went back to the plane, to work on air sharing with a stage.

Steve called “OOA,” and I donated my stage reg and switched to my backup reg. I then deployed my long hose, stowed the stage reg, and we hovered there for a second. What I didn’t know, was that Steve had turned off my stage. When I put the stage reg back in my mouth, I had no gas. I went to my back up reg, which I had a hard time with, as I had already swallowed some water, so Steve shoved his primary in my hand, to which I was able to stick in my mouth.. Phew…

Ok… a few things to learn from here… I am new to stage diving, and did not know that I am supposed to shut it off when donating long hose. I do know that it is off when not in use and charged. What I did not know, was that Steve had shut it off. He did notice that I was putting the reg in my mouth and was tempted to turn it on, but decided not to. He wanted to see what I would do. Not a bad thing to do, but I think that he should have either shown me that he was turning the stage off or told me that I needed to shut it off myself. Another lesson, was that I should darn well purge that reg before shoving it in my mouth. Afterthought too… It would have been much easier to just reach down and turn on the stage reg. Being half-arsed new to stage diving, it wasn’t my first reaction… something I will practice.

Anyway, once I got a few breaths in me, I reconfigured everything, clipped off my long hose etc., and carried on with the dive. Everything was ok, and lessons learned.

I didn’t feel so bad during our dive debrief with our buddies… Apparently, they had practiced a stage gas donate as well, and also had things to work on.

Next dives.. Kingston and Ivy Lea! The weekend is almost here!