If you’ve followed our adventures in the Capital of Paradise (that’s Madang, of course), you have already met Rich Jones. Here’s my good buddy Rich in repose with a glass of his prize-winning ginger beer. Very yummy stuff:

I’ve dived with Rich for a long time. Sadly, we don’t see him much these days as he has had to relocate to Port Moresby for his work. But he never fails to improve the atmosphere on Faded Glory whenever he can get to Madang.

Why divers get bent (nitrogen bubbles in the blood) is sometimes a mystery. No matter how conservative the diving habits are, a certain number of divers get bent every year for no apparent reason. It’s a gamble that one chooses to take. You’re betting that if you follow the rules, you won’t get bent. Some people lose.

I know Rich to be a very conservative diver. He watches his computer and always does his safety stops. He doesn’t go deep unless there’s good reason to do so.

So, why did Rich get bent?

I’d love to include the complete email that he sent to his friends, but it’s too long. I will include a paragraph that might shed some light on the matter. It’s looking as if trusting your computer might not be the safest thing to do.

The chamber team downloaded my Sunnto and found 10 dives this year which violated the deco time or safety stop. However that contrasts with my normally conservative profiles. The last one was last Thursday – my second dive. The computer read out on the laptop says I came to the surface with 5 mins of deco time left. I didn’t. I cleared that deco and the computer alarms should have gone off and locked the computer for 48 hours. I was not aware of any problems or any user error or any early ascents. One dive in Tawali earlier in the year had 13 mins of deco time left and no computer warnings. That stunned me. Maybe it is a software glitch or a problem with the laptop software or maybe it is a problem with the dive computer itself. I had never downloaded the dives because I have Vista on my laptop. We’ll investigate further. Most cases of DCS have no cause or multiple causes. One other possibility is a heart chamber defect – a PFO. The sign for that is rapid onset bends. Or maybe it was just my bad day and we will never know.

This is particularly troubling to me, because I dive with a Suunto computer. Like Rich, I trust the computer to warn me if I’m violating the rules that are designed to minimize (notice I did not say eliminate) my chances of getting bent.

Fortunately Rich will be diving again in a few months. He seems to have suffered no permanent damage.

To cheer Rich up and possibly amuse you, I’ll show a couple of shots that we took while visiting Rich in Port Moresby when we were on our way to Australia last year.

Here’s a night shot:

And, here’s the same angle at sunrise:

Rich, mate, you’ve got a sunrise coming to you.

As soon as the medicos sign you off we’ll have a celebratory dive on Faded Glory. You pick the spot.

In the meantime, get your skinny Pommy bum back to Madang for a visit and a well-earned war story.

No related posts.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 26th, 2008 at 07:53 and is filed under Dangerous, Under the Sea. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.