How do you work on the hard stuff?

[Peter Guy]

Thal, I knew you were a gentleman and a scholar.

[LCF]

Thal, you just made megapoints with Peter, who is a G&S nut from way back . . . And the first public musical performance I ever sang in was the Mikado.

Richard, we'll pursue the topic privately, because I now have NO idea what you are talking about.

[Thalassamania]

Ah, I wish I had a copy of our parody: "I am the very model of a modern PADI In-struc-tor."

[LCF]

Thal, we have GOT to make it to the Big Island one of these days . . . I think we'd all have just too much fun. Says Lynne, whose mind is busily seaching for other G&S songs amenable to diving parody . . .

[Thalassamania]

Thal, we have GOT to make it to the Big Island one of these days . . . I think we'd all have just too much fun. Says Lynne, whose mind is busily seaching for other G&S songs amenable to diving parody . . .

"Stick close to your books and never go undersea and you may be the leader of PADI ..."

[Grateful Diver]

I dunno . . . a friend almost jumped in the water with gas turned off this weekend. Despite advanced training. I figure it's easier to check. The older I get, the more dubious I am about my ability to remember everything!

Did Peter tell you about that? Or was there more than one?

I don't mind gear checks, really ... I'm just genetically averse to a checklist mentality ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

[Peter Guy]

Well maybe we had a little discussion -- and I'm not exactly sure that the diver would have jumped in without absolutely confirming working regs -- but it was closer than it should have been.

[Codyjp]

I hate to keep going back to my experience as a flight instructor but I think it can help a bit here.

I find that in emergencies/problems most people get really worked up over the obvious problem and dedicate themselves 100% to the issue at hand. I'll fail landing gear or something else and see what they do. I always note heading, altitude, airspace, location etc when I first spring the problem. You'd be amazed at how messed up people get. There has been countless number of aviation accidents due to pilots analyzing a burned out light bulb right up until the aircraft impacts the ground.

The reason I bring this up is that I'd be willing to guess that in an emergency you (and most people) spend a lot of time dealing with the direct problem and lose sight of the 'big picture.'

Lets use a primary light failure as an example. This isn't a huge deal in most cases. The problem and the solution are very appearant to the diver. However, the path to correction is a bit bigger. First a diver needs to maintain position in the water column if you start to cork then the problem is compounded. Then, if possible you want to notify your buddy, or allow them to discover the problem. Then you must deploy a backup and evaluate. This is where things become complicated. If your on a day dive on a sunny reef then enjoy yourself on the rest of the dive But this same problem becomes a lot bigger issue if you are 40 minutes into a cave with mandatory deco and you forgot to charge the batts on your backup. The same problem might have two entirely different solution patterns.

The problem is you can't sit down and say "the problemis X and the solution is Y." It just doesn't work that way. No two problems are identical and each solution needs to be thought out individually. Make sure that when you go over solutions in your head between dives you ensure that you are correlating the information and solution, not just remembering a solution with rote memory. When you learn to correlate you will notice that you no longer think about an issue but you react to the problem with a concise, planned execution of a solution.

Lastly, before acting on a problem make sure that you evaluate the potential repurcutions experience by the answer. You'd hate to have a solution creat another problem.