WC2011 - descent line stolen to Sara Campbell!

[nostres]

In case of no rope/line I would had to do CNF way up and rely on my oxygen storage. My CNF PB at the competition was 84m so I would probably at least ascend by my self and rely that safety would find me.

Basically You had bad luck at start and tons of luck at the end

Everybody's happy You made it, there was already one tragic accident involving lanyard this year. It's great that Yours turned to be only "incident"

 

[nostres]

BTW that lanyard from Your first picture does look shitty to me for two reasons. First, velcro strap is very narrow and second - it looks like the area where velcro strap are holding together is around what 50-60% of the circle. That will depend on how big is Your wrist and wetsuit thickness of course.

Below is my lanyard with the wrist piece that came from the kite (Kiteboarding)

No matter how hard I pull just can't get it off my wrist but this velcro is almost 3cm wide + when on my wrist velcro to velcro makes almost full circle

 

[efattah]

My lanyard doesn't use velcro and I refuse to use any lanyard that has velcro.

 

[FishyHunter]

how long was he underwater for? Totally epic dive!

 

[StefanoMizzi]

Thinking about the case, I believe the AIDA Board, Comissions, and the Assembly should discuss it and set clear rules what to do in a case when a competitor dives, and the dive needs to be interrupted immediately for safety reasons. Perhaps using a laud UW speaker or a siren, and/or continusly pulling on the rope could be used to signal the competitor that he has to interrupt the dive immediatly and return back. Never mind if more competitors will be diving in the same time - it is better if they all have their dives cancelled (or have to repeat them), than losing a diver. If there was a safety diver with a scooter ready, he could have stopped Michal. But apparently there are no procedure, and no drills for such case, so even if the scooter was there, it is a question whether they'd react quick enough if the procedure was not trained.

EDIT: and in the same time, also for many other cases, I think there should be a way for the freediver to send a signal to the surface in distress. Not only in case of losing the rope, but also when entangled, having some medical problem, or in many other cases. One possibility is repeatadly pulling the line (if not lost) - but as long as such signal is not standardized and tought to both competitors and safeties, it risks not to be used, or not to be interpreted correctly or quickly enough. Some electronic singalling might be even better, and there are devices on the market that can even give its position and depth under water. I think it would be worth of investigating its use for competitions and record attempts (well for trainings finally too).

In skandalopetra, pulling the rope means "take me up", so that would be a "natural" signal in some respect.

Another simple -- though not final -- solution is to have a safety diver at around 20m: he should dive, say, 10secs before the official top and wait there for the diver, and stop him/her if he sees something wrong (e.g., the missing lanyard). Of course this is not the final solution, and what Trux suggests is much better, but it can be implemented immediately and it would have worked in this case.

S.

 

[nostres]

Velcro or not it is still amazing that with all this fancy stuff they had there like scooters, sonar the simplest piece of equipment failed.
The LINK was the weakest link

 

[ellucius]

... In the attachment you find my shitty velcro band from its yesterday last dive and one that is safe and which i plan to use.

Miso, be honest, the velcro band from the first picture is not the one from your last dive. It is in fact the second one. Which I hope you are not going to use, it is known to some that it would not hold on a man's ankle.


see 1:45 on the bottom right

 

[Ale Andres]

There is something strange...the lanyard is very noisy when you free fall, was he so concentrated that didn´t realized that???

 

[rddk]

For made my lanyard i used a solution stolen from motorcicles helmets, the double ring seal + velcro, in this way is impossible to loose your lanyard form your wrist and there aren't any saefty problems cuz i use 2 snap-hooks, one is the main one that fix you to the main guideline, the second is at half of lanyard cable that is a quickrelase once. Easy, saefty and cheap solution.

 

[Claude Chapuis]

The lanyard goes away during the duck dive :
- the lanyard is not worn as it should
or
- the lanyard is not good

Interesting idea the underwater acoustic signal to stop an athlete's dive

Agree with you Nostres : the two lanyards showed to us are not good lanyard
Agree too that the wrist system you use coming from the wake is more solid

 

[hombre]

Mišo, nebyl by k dispozici profil tohoto ponoru z hodinek? / Would be interesting dive profile of this dive ....

 

[jome]

Sorry to sound fatalist, but it was incredible luck that this didin't turn out to be a fatal accident. Maybe 5-10 sec more freefalling with eyes closed and the situation would've been very grave. Not a very big margin when we're talking about a persons life, so I refuse to but any smileys on this post.

This needs to never happen again.

Not to point fingers in any direction, but it amazes me in general what kinds of lanyards people still bring to competitions (I'll admit I've done it too). It is your main safety equipment. Imagine someone making their spare parachute out of old woolen sheets or something. Why an earth would you take a risk like that? What point is it having a lanyard, if it doesn't work in a live situation - then it's just there to make the dive harder for no reason.

I'm so happy that Michal is alive. And feel for Sarah - what a reason to miss a WR dive!

 

[JennyWren]

My lanyard doesn't use velcro and I refuse to use any lanyard that has velcro.

If you get a chance can you post a picture of your lanyard? I'm looking to make a new one and I want it to be as safe and secure as possible (or else it is just more of a liability).

 

[picasso]

Ok, guys, there are many comments and smart ideas. It is very easy to say after it is past. I have never had problem with the velcro before. It is true that I have very few FIM dives so very few dives to put my lanyard fixed to the ankle. Of course i didn't realise the lanyard had released. Normally I keep contact with the line. This time i wanted to be faster on the way down so i decided not to keep contact with line. i have very relaxed and nice dive till I had started to open my eyes and look for the line, bottom plate and tag. There are also questions about the depth and dive time. I turned at 90 m and finished the dive after 3:34. To be honest it was my longest dive and i was suprised that no safety is comming (they didn't expect me on that line) and how concious i was after comming up. See attached dive profile from my D4. It was the last dive with that shitty velcro strap and last dive I didn't keep the contact with line. There was slight current, but it is also more safe to keep contact with line also for other reasons like unexpected vertigo caused by whaever reason ...

 

[bobdonny]

That is a remarkable profile! It looks like your line and Sara's line on either side

 

[Jouskari]

Sorry to sound fatalist, but it was incredible luck that this didin't turn out to be a fatal accident. Maybe 5-10 sec more freefalling with eyes closed and the situation would've been very grave. Not a very big margin when we're talking about a persons life, so I refuse to but any smileys on this post.

This needs to never happen again.

Not to point fingers in any direction, but it amazes me in general what kinds of lanyards people still bring to competitions (I'll admit I've done it too). It is your main safety equipment. Imagine someone making their spare parachute out of old woolen sheets or something. Why an earth would you take a risk like that? What point is it having a lanyard, if it doesn't work in a live situation - then it's just there to make the dive harder for no reason.

I'm so happy that Michal is alive. And feel for Sarah - what a reason to miss a WR dive!

Totally agree. I was there just a few minutes after Michals dive and couldn´t be happier that he is still with us. The incident had all the possibilites for at total catastrophe. If he would have circulated seawards instead of going towards line 2 we might have a total different discussion.

Here´s a few ideas/opinions...

Regarding Velcro. it´s good as long as it is maintained properly and changed with e.g. one year intervals (that´s how I do it). The strap also needs wide and long enough to cover the whole wrist (heavy duty and 50 mm wide, NOT the stuff from sewing stores)

Quick-release locks should not have straps connected to them as these tend to catch fingers, toes, ropes, the plate etc. in starts or turns unlocking the lan-yard. I´ve already seen this happen.

Lan-yard check at registration should obviously also include checking the wrist-strap. However with the multitude of lanyards out-there it´s hard to say what is actually is safe and what is not. That is why there should be only one tested and accepted spec for a lan-yard.

The acoustinc alarm is a really good idea and should be implemented by any comp. organization from now on. (could easily be done by having an immersed long metal pole that is beaten with a hammer).

Deep safety needs to be on site and on stand-by to do safety for the whole strech of competition rope even down to 100 m. (this would of-course require special equipment like scooters and maybe even heliox etc.)

 

[Kimmo]

Hello,

And thank you for sharing this kind of important information.

Couple of thoughts also from my side as I have to think how to improve the Aida competition safety best practices and how to prevent this kind of cases happen in the future.

I assume that pretty often a freediver lanyards are designed for wrist use, not to ankle which is a bit thicker (=velcro strap is shorter). Quite often these lanyards are also homemade and made from the parts at hand. So the quality variate.

I like personally the idea that the dive would be possible to cancel in an emergency situations by using underwater sounds (sounds like in underwater rugby). So that is a topic which should be thought seriously. On the other hand I´m disappointed, but also frustrated, as I tried to agree with some of the competition jury members at Kalamata that this kind of dives has to be cancelled by the safeties if the lanyard is lost in the beginning of the dive. This suggestion was based on some experience as I have seen similar cases earlier and as there was a pretty similar case in Med cup prior this competition, if I have not understood it wrong. Although based on the video what I saw and the interviews with the competition safeties today, nobody did not even tried that. So there are a lot of lessons to be learned for all of us now.

Last, but not least, I´m willing to remind that if you use a tennis ball as a lanyard stopper at the bottom plate, please use a duct tape, or similar, to make it tough. Really tough. In "early days" of the lanyards there was a lot of cases when diver got the carabiner tangled in the tennis ball. I have also tried that same with some deep dives and that happens pretty easily when doing freefall with full speed if the ball is too soft.

Safe dives,

- Kimmo Lahtinen, president of Aida

 

[jome]

That is an impressive dive have to say, which I think further illustrates the danger. I'm sure most of us could not be expected to dive back from 90m unassisted with a slight panic on. Had it been a less capable diver...

Anyway, and sorry for the off topic, what's with the tennisballs anyway? Why couldn't the stopper be something rigid, like a metal cone or something? It would also give a reassuring "click" sound right before the bottom so you'd wake up

 

[dimitris33]

Underwater sounds might disturbs significantly the others freediver's relaxation while descenting or ascenting around.

Additionaly I repeatedly read about "...my lanyard, his lanyard, her lanyard..etc".

Why not stopping everyone bringing his lanyard instead? If there going to be four diving zones for instance then four lanyards should be used permanently attached to the lines. The organizer will be responsible for having these lanyards as a standard competition equipment which will be ofcourse of high quality without velcros etc..

This way the risk of failing lanyards reduced to only 3 or 4 depending on the competition zones contrary to about 150 lanyards brought by the athletes...

I dont know if this has been told before so excuse me.

 

[trux]

Underwater sounds might disturbs significantly the others freediver's relaxation while descenting or ascenting around.

Who cares when a life is in danger! Thas should be of absolutely no concern! When a dive needs to be interrupted for safety reasons, it does not matter at all when other competitors have to abort their dives too.