Dave, I would love to hear your story about your rescue. I have received 
several horror stories (or learning experiences depending on how you look 
at it) and am considering setting up a "I Survived This Clusterfuck" page 
on my web site.

So if you all want, send me your real anus-clenching adventures, your 
true terror stricken battles with life and death (tech oriented, please). 
And if I get enough I will document them for all of us to learn from. Of 
course anonymity will be no problem if so requested (that means I will 
leave out your name for you florida guys).

JT Barker started this with his story on his brush with death on the 
Doria and I think sets a great example of how to help us divers by 
avoiding knowledge via the "hard way".

One of the areas of the Trimix site which has the most hits is the 
AquaCorps incidents page, it would be nice to counterpoise this rather 
depressing set of stories with some more survival one.

   Jim

Sender: Simon L Hartley  Date: 5/12/99 10:54 PM

>From memory (not very reliable I'm afraid) I can only think of two
>occasions when people I have been diving with have had to ditch weight
>belts (both on the surface).  One was a relative newby who had a faulty
>dump valve (I helped remove the belt and held onto it) and the other was an
>advanced student on a drift dive (we (eight of us) had been lost by our
>boat and ended up getting picked up by the air-sea rescue, it's a long
>story).  I can think of two occasions also when people I've been diving
>with have lost weight belts underwater.  One was a DM (well after a
>fashion, but that's yet another story) at the end of a dive (I wasn't
>around when it happened but I recovered the belt).  The other was a
>relative newby on a safety stop (luckily he had the good sense to invert
>himself and start swimming down, I grabbed him and the belt and reunited
>them).  I have recovered lots of weight belts that have been accidentally
>dropped on the surface though (competing for space in my garage with the
>anchors [GRIN]).  
>
>I can see the argument for not wanting to loose a belt on a deco dive and
>puting the crotch strap over the belt is obviously a lot more convenient
>(particularly so for me gearing up in the water).  When dealing with newbys
>or students though it is nice to be able to easily and quickly remove their
>belt on the surface if the need arises (particularly dealing with a paniced
>diver, typically in such an instance we are taught to grab the diver from
>behind pump air into the BC and dump the belt in one fluid motion).  For
>myself I find it hard to get past the dogma of "don't foul your weight
>belt".  If you keep the amount of weight on the belt down to say 6 pounds
>and weigh yourself properly then loosing this amount of weight underwater
>may not be such a problem anyway, invert and swim down to retrieve it (if
>close to the bottom, or just swim yourself slowly up to the surface if not
>or grab the nearest rock or anchor line).  I have deliberately removed my
>belt in the past or free dived in the same wetsuit and gear I use for
>SCUBA, I have never had any problems staying down in shallow water (but
>then I don't usually have to carry much weight anyway).
>
>Simon
>
>Simon L Hartley
>RSM Unit Web Administrator\First Year Course Coordinator
>Associate Lecturer
>School of Resource Science and Management
>Southern Cross University
>P.O. Box 157
>Lismore NSW, Australia 2480
>Ph: (02) 66203251 or (61 66) 203 251
>Fax:(02) 66212669
>E-mail: shartley@sc*.ed*.au*
>
>http://www.scu.edu.au/staff_pages/shartley/index.html
>
>--
>Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'.
>Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
>


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