Now for the continuation and conclusion of this episode in The Adventures of Q….

Finding myself on a reef wall with a wicked downcurrent threatening to
take me into the abyss with it if I let go of the rock I was clinging
to, I look up and see my group of divers hanging placidly over the reef
flat and waiting out a safety stop. I had to make it to them!

I began to move up the wall, hand over hand, literally crawling. Fin
and pull; fin and pull. When you are pulling yourself along the reef
against a strong current you need to watch out for where you put your
hands. You don’t want to grab onto live coral; you don’t want to grab a
rock with an unnoticed urchin clinging to the other side of it; you
don’t want to grab hold of coral rubble that is loose enough to pick
up.

So for the next five minutes I hauled myself from a depth of around 25
m to about 12 meters. For those of you who don’t wish to do the math in
your head, this comes to a little over two and a half meters a minute
(less than two body lengths)—way less than the recommended maximum of 18 meters
per minute for an ascent. I was getting pretty tired and breathing
exceptionally hard, but I knew I had the strength to make it to the
surface. At the 12-meter mark I came upon a small overhang in the wall
and took shelter under it in order to catch my breath. I took the
opportunity to check my air gauge: 10 bar (150 psi) and dropping fast.
I was only halfway to the surface, and I was worried.

In all of the training sessions I've attended, as well as those I've
given, it is taught that when you're in dire straits your training
simply "kicks in." Although I never openly voiced skepticism, I had
always wondered about the actual truth of statements to that effect.
I’m here to tell you that it does happen that way. Here I was, huddled
under a little rock shelf with an increasingly strong downcurrent
sweeping past me and perhaps with too little air to make it to the
surface. And yet, I did follow the steps of self-rescue: stop, breathe,
think, act. While I didn’t want to stop too long or breathe too much
considering the reading on my SPG, I clearly recall thinking the
situation through and deciding on a course of action I believed would
get me out alive.

It was only a few meters more to the top of the wall, so I decided to
use my remaining gas to get as far as I could by crawling up the wall
and then to perform a CESA to the surface. This would mean letting go
of the wall, but if I could get to the top of the wall, I knew I could
swim for the surface. Even if the outgoing tidal current pushed me away
from the island I wouldn’t be so far away as to not be found easily
once I got my SMB inflated. Time for action: I emerged from my shelter
and started the slow climb over the last bit of wall. As I reached the
top, another diver appeared at my side. It was my DM! I showed him my
SPG, now hovering between zero and five bar, and he passed me his
octopus. That was one less worry! But now were there two of us trapped
in the downcurrent?

Suddenly I felt the current release me! The water was relatively calm
just a couple of meters above the reef: flowing offshore, yes, but no
longer pushing me downwards. I was able to complete a nice long safety
stop while my heart and breathing rates normalized and I surfaced with
nobody but the DM having realized the dangerous situation I had got
into. I asked the DM how he knew I needed help since he and the group
were calmly waiting out the safety stop while I was finning for my
life. He said he looked down and saw no fish; they had all taken cover
or been blown away, so he waited until I was in range and went to lend
his support. All’s well that ends well? Almost, but even better!

Whenever we are involved in an “incident” we should try to learn from
it so that we can either avoid another occurrence or plan better ways
of dealing with it. Even though I had planned the dive according to a
conservative RMV for a dive against a moderate current (and dived the
plan), and had figured an approximate turn pressure for the ascent with
what I thought was enough margin for an emergency, I still found myself
in a dangerous situation. This was a unique experience for me in that
it was the only time I have ever really needed to use another diver’s
air. How would this event help me to manage my dives more effectively?

After that dive I knew what to expect at Blue Corner and how the water
behaves there with a falling tide. In retrospect I decided that it's
wisest to conserve air and energy by moving along the wall from
overhang to overhang during the ascent rather than just trying to
climb. I had the opportunity to test this hypothesis out on subsequent
dives, and in just this way got a stressed-out buddy up the wall,
safely and with plenty of remaining air, during another occurrence of a
downcurrent.

Gaining experience and learning from it was the real “happy ending.”