Strike wrote:

> What's even worse is that it's a matter of days since I wrote to Mike -
> about diving 'Rules':
> >It seems to me that the one that's broken the most often is that of
> >commonsense - particularly when we become blase about an 'easy'
> >dive! <<
>
> Lo and behold, I was deserted by common sense!  :-)
>
> (Which also serves to highlight the fact that it's the little mistakes that
> can kill and that nothing in diving should be taken for granted!)  :-)

I'm sure that we can all tell tales on this subject and I'll lead off
(forgive me if I've told this one here before):

More years ago than I care to remember I did a DM course with a
particularly tough Instructor. Having done the basics (Phew) we mostly
played out the DM role with the other three students (plus Instructor)
acting out the "diver" roles in various evil incarnations of such:

The know-it-all diver (who doesn't at all)
The "gee, anybody know of yet another bit of equipment" diver (who has
it all)
The apprehensive diver
The "I'm all right as long as there's someone next to me" diver
The quietly competent diver
The gung ho diver
The macho diver
The newbie diver
The solo diver (as distinct from self-sufficient)

Any additions to the above? Damn, what do I mean "any"? :-7

Anyway, we took it in turns to act as DM and, as Les (let's call him
that) had drilled into us, the worst thing we could do was lose them
even before we had got into the water. Since we had to help them gear
up, this was a likely event, particularly if we hadn't made the
instructions explicit.

For example "go down the line to 5 metres and wait for me" begged the
question of anchor or shot line or mermaid line (even though that
last is on the surface) and earned zero merit points because they
would duly go off on any line except the right one.

So there I was in DM mode, got them off the boat and successfully
found all four of them again at 5 metres on the anchor line. PHEW.

Shepherded them down to the bottom at 28 metres, told them to hang
around, got four OK signals,  picked up the pick and set the anchor.

Let go ... and started to float up.

OK, expelled gas from the (then) BCD ... continued to float up.

Put hand to waist and started to laugh, one of my companions promptly
came to me and grabbed me protectively, thinking I was narked.

Not so, this "wonderful" DM had simply, in his haste, forgotten to don
his weight belt. I wasn't helped by the fact that since I almost never
need to use the Valsalva manoeuvre I usually pull myself down the
anchor line and forget about any air in the BCD.

I rather doubt I got a pass on that particular training dive.

Any other such tales out there?

Christian