Switching Divers Under the Ice.

[DetectorGuy]

I haven't been out to 400' under the ice yet... But I have been 300' out one time. We were doing a disconnected diver drill (something that any ice diver worth his salt should do once in a while to keep the skills honed). The diver that was pretending to be disconnected was using the 125' rope and was out there somewhere to the South, an unknown distance from the hole. We did have 4 people that day so one designated tender, one safety diver, one diver pretending to be lost, and one diver to go out on the longer rope looking for the 'lost' diver. The longer safety rope we had was a 300 footer and the tender had not practiced this disconnected diver drill before. I attached to the 300' rope and had the tender check my connection. I slipped in the hole and swam due East using my compass, expecting the tender to stop me 25' beyond the length of the shorter rope so I could start swimming clockwise with the rope tight in hopes that the disconnected diver would be waiting at the surface like he was trained to do. I swam as fast as I could waiting for the rope to tighten and it seemed to take forever. Finally the rope tightened and I started the radius to my right. went up to the surface and swam the radius keeping the rope as tight as I could to 'catch' the disconnected diver. I was swimming this radius forever, and then I felt the four tugs telling me the missing diver just grabbed my safety rope. The missing diver not only tugged 4 times in my direction, but also toward the tender who started to pull us both to the hole.
One of the lessons that we learned from this is that I should have communicated to the tender (prior to me jumping in) that he should have stopped me at 150' (25' past the length of the lost divers rope).
The second lesson we learned is when it comes to dive ropes, there should be a primary safety rope at what ever length, and a emergency (or secondary rope) that is 25' longer than the primary rope to avoid wasting time by going so much farther than is needed (the circumfrence of a 300' radius is 1885').
The third lesson I learned is that even though it was a drill, my SAC rate went in the toilet when the adrennalin kicked in. I started the drill with 3,000 psi and ended with under 1,000 psi.
The fourth lesson I learned was when I was out at 300' from the hole (if I was the one to become disconnected) there is no one coming to get me, and I should just try to enjoy the rest of my last dive.
The Fifth lesson we learned is that each dive should be a training dive, and never get to the point where we think we know everything there is to know about diving.