Deefstes
Contributor
- Messages
- 1,396
- Reaction score
- 49
- # of dives
- 100 - 199
Hi all,
Yesterday evening I had the opportunity to do a try-out dive on a Poseidon Mk VI at our LDS in their pool. I have to be clear first of all that I know very little about rebreathers and that I am far from qualified to even consider getting training. I am AOW with only 65 dives to my name.
Either way, I thought it might be an interesting experience and decided to take the opportunity. And an interesting experience it was! I would love to know from rebreather divers if what I experienced was really to be put down as diver inexperience or if something wasn't wrong with the unit perhaps (or of course a combination of the two).
From the moment I switched to closed circuit I started feeling a shortness of breath. I wrote this down as unfamiliarity with breathing from a closed loop. I never had any issues breathing from SCUBA equipment, even when I just started my OW training but I know that some people (like my wife) do and I assumed I was experiencing that same anxiety now. The air also had an odd taste to it but I have no idea how to describe the taste. I wrote that down as the result of expelled air being scrubbed and breathed at a higher temperature than with OC.
OK, so those were the warning signs that I ignored (or didn't really know to heed). As I started diving I had trouble getting down (and I did have minimum loop volume). I may have been underweighted but I imagine that I was hyperventilating also which obviously wouldn't have helped. I did manage to get down by swimming but was positively buoyant all of the time. This wasn't a huge problem but it did mean that I had to work a little at staying down which compounded the breathing issue.
At any rate, the dive never exceeded 3m and lasted no longer than 3 minutes, by which time I was desperate to end this ordeal and get out of the pool. By the time I got out of the pool I had a splitting headache and I wasn't feeling very steady. I had to stop the car on the way home to get out and vomit and as soon as I got home I got into bed. By this morning I felt much better although there's still this lingering headache.
Do these sound like the typical symptoms of a noob who dives on equipment that he's only received a very basic explanation of or does it perhaps sound like there may have been something awry with the rebreather? I'm wondering if the scrubber didn't get flooded (or at least wet) sometime during the course of the day. Many non-rebreather divers have tried out this unit throughout the day and it wouldn't surprise me at all. The console however did show a ppO2 of 0.4 throughout my dive which, if I understand correctly, means that the mix was considered to be good by the two analyzers.
My wife also did the try-out dive at the same time (on a different unit of course) and she had no issues whatsoever. One of the divers before me was very vocal that he didn't enjoy the rebreather at all but he didn't elaborate on his experience of it and he didn't look the way I felt. I also don't know which of the two units he dived so I can't make any conclusion based on that.
I'm not trying to find a recourse or anything, I merely want to clarify this for my own sanity. I am fully willing to accept that I did things wrong and that this is the result of someone doing things wrong on a rebreather (even if only for 3min at 3m). But I would like to at least have some understanding of what happened.
Yesterday evening I had the opportunity to do a try-out dive on a Poseidon Mk VI at our LDS in their pool. I have to be clear first of all that I know very little about rebreathers and that I am far from qualified to even consider getting training. I am AOW with only 65 dives to my name.
Either way, I thought it might be an interesting experience and decided to take the opportunity. And an interesting experience it was! I would love to know from rebreather divers if what I experienced was really to be put down as diver inexperience or if something wasn't wrong with the unit perhaps (or of course a combination of the two).
From the moment I switched to closed circuit I started feeling a shortness of breath. I wrote this down as unfamiliarity with breathing from a closed loop. I never had any issues breathing from SCUBA equipment, even when I just started my OW training but I know that some people (like my wife) do and I assumed I was experiencing that same anxiety now. The air also had an odd taste to it but I have no idea how to describe the taste. I wrote that down as the result of expelled air being scrubbed and breathed at a higher temperature than with OC.
OK, so those were the warning signs that I ignored (or didn't really know to heed). As I started diving I had trouble getting down (and I did have minimum loop volume). I may have been underweighted but I imagine that I was hyperventilating also which obviously wouldn't have helped. I did manage to get down by swimming but was positively buoyant all of the time. This wasn't a huge problem but it did mean that I had to work a little at staying down which compounded the breathing issue.
At any rate, the dive never exceeded 3m and lasted no longer than 3 minutes, by which time I was desperate to end this ordeal and get out of the pool. By the time I got out of the pool I had a splitting headache and I wasn't feeling very steady. I had to stop the car on the way home to get out and vomit and as soon as I got home I got into bed. By this morning I felt much better although there's still this lingering headache.
Do these sound like the typical symptoms of a noob who dives on equipment that he's only received a very basic explanation of or does it perhaps sound like there may have been something awry with the rebreather? I'm wondering if the scrubber didn't get flooded (or at least wet) sometime during the course of the day. Many non-rebreather divers have tried out this unit throughout the day and it wouldn't surprise me at all. The console however did show a ppO2 of 0.4 throughout my dive which, if I understand correctly, means that the mix was considered to be good by the two analyzers.
My wife also did the try-out dive at the same time (on a different unit of course) and she had no issues whatsoever. One of the divers before me was very vocal that he didn't enjoy the rebreather at all but he didn't elaborate on his experience of it and he didn't look the way I felt. I also don't know which of the two units he dived so I can't make any conclusion based on that.
I'm not trying to find a recourse or anything, I merely want to clarify this for my own sanity. I am fully willing to accept that I did things wrong and that this is the result of someone doing things wrong on a rebreather (even if only for 3min at 3m). But I would like to at least have some understanding of what happened.