team diving skills

[LKunze]

Tom, I actually did witness a real OOA emergency with a long hose setup at Wazee at 100ft down during AOW class last summer as you probably heard in previous posts. Chris had a freeflow on a dive just after reaching our planned depth. The instructor had a long hose setup. He donated his primary to Chris and took his bungeed backup. This was a smooth transition as I'm sure Chris would agree with. Shortly after the reg handoff the instructors bungeed backup then started to freeflow as well. The instructor tried to go for his pony bottle which was clipped off on his left hip but it was hung up and he wasn't able to free it. The instructor made the decision to make an ascent and they ended up making it to the surface safely. I've done several dives with divers that didn't use the long hose while I did and it was something I went over with each diver that wasn't aware of my setup before the dive. Like I said, I'm just not convinced by your scenario to not use a long hose and don't see a long hose setup as making that described situation any worse. Proper training is the real key...if you're described situation happened at 100ft down with full panic and the panic wasn't taken control of we'd be talking about a casualty or casualties regardless of how the regs were configured.