The Perfect Storm

I've decided to call yesterday's dive at Redondo Beach The Perfect Storm. A series of event contributed to near disaster. First the things that contributed to the making of the storm:

1) I was significantly dehydrated, I realized that just before the dive I was quite thirsty so I downed a 16oz water and went for a dive. I should have had a lot more because now over 24 hours later I still have only peed about 2oz even though I've been drinking water like a fiend, though I really can't identify why I was so dehydrated to begin with.

2) The other person that was supposed to show up didn't so I went solo. This was a mistake even though I dive solo fairly often. And yet I have to say that not having a buddy might have helped me on my return navigation but other than that I think I did the best that could be done under the circumstances.

3) The entire dive was spent kicking and kicking, pretty hard and consistent. First I had to get to my planned depth of 150' and then when things went wrong I had to kick back pretty aggressively also.

4) When I decided to abort my dive I turned around and took a heading of about 70 coming back because I had gone out at about 250. For whatever reason I drifted quite a distance from the stairs almost into the boat lanes in front of the pier. It was a very long swim back to the stairs.

5) Although I hate to admit it, all of this was exacerbated by my age. Although I'm in very good shape, I just can't do the things I used to do.

6) I once again had a failure of a Wisdom computer. See the screen shot of the dive profile.

Now the details:

I entered the water with 7 or 8 students along with Becky Anderson and her assistant. We kicked out to just beyond the end of the pier where she once again discussed the dive plan. When it was time to drop none of the students dropped right away, probably being concerned that someone else would have a problem and making sure they didn't go down alone. I've seen it before. Anyways, I waited a bit and saw two people start to release their BC air so I went down and landed at about 56 feet. I waited and waited, probably two or three minutes and decided to continue my dive. Obviously someone at the surface was having some issues.

Soft silty sand, no signs of life, so I headed at about 250 as had been recommended. Finally at almost 80' I saw one tiny fish. At 100' a dead shark of some sort. Look at this ugly thing and the silt on it. I didn't even try to get closer since I was on a plan to get to 150ft.

I finally saw 150' and still nothing to look at so I decided to go another 10'. I gave two kicks looked at my gauge and it said 220ft! All the indicators were blinking like crazy and I realized the computer was probably failing. So I turned around still with about 1600psi in the tank and headed back without any dilly dallying. The computer now was showing 50ft but I knew I was a lot deeper than that. So I kept on kicking and kicking. Of course it got lighter and lighter above but the couple of times I looked up I couldn't tell how far it was to the surface.

Eventually I got to 500psi and started getting a bit anxious. When I got to 350psi I decided it would be better to come up alive with the bends than never come up at all so I slowly headed for the surface. Ends up I was probably at about 30-40ft. I really wish I had known that since I could have stayed still on the bottom for at least 5 minutes and that would have tremendously minimized my DCS.

When I got to shore I walked out of the water and completely totally exhausted I said a thank you and rested for a few minutes. It took what seemed like forever to get my gear off since I couldn't even stand at that point. After that struggle I took all my equipment except tank and BC and walked up the steps where I met Gaille. She could tell immediately there was a problem and went to get one of the other guys to help me with my tank and BC.

I sat down while gasping for air, drank two bottles of water and gathered my wits about me. When I stood up to go to the car I had a tremendous tingling sensation in both lower legs and I had trouble walking. After more rest at the car and talking about it I realized my legs were better but now I had a huge headache at the very top of my head. I said to Gaille that I should go to the hospital and luckily Becky suggested Long Beach since it has a hyperbaric chamber. So she drove me there and Gaille followed.

On the way I call DAN and informed them of my situation.Dan is amazing! They called the hospital, alerted them to my condition and were very efficient. The RN at the hyperbaric chamber called me to inform me they were ready for me and wanted to know how far away I was.

I ended up spending two hours in the chamber and went back for another 1 1/2 hours this morning.

My muscles ache like crazy and the doctor says I will have symptoms for a few days so take it easy.

Thanks, actually a million thanks to the people that helped me through a very tough day. Becky Anderson, Eric Aubort, the nurses and doctors at Long Beach Memorial Hospital and especially Gaille Mintz.

I'm one lucky guy!