close call with a weight belt

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mfalco

Contributor
Messages
698
Reaction score
22
Location
Mashpee, MA (USA)
# of dives
100 - 199
Monday night I was with my regular buddy doing a night dive. It was his second night dive, and first in over 20' of water.

About 1/2 way through the dive, in 50' of water, I look at him and saw a problem. His weight belt was extreemly loose. It had to have come unbuckled and rebuckled before it fell off. If he had swam toward the surface, it would have fallen off.

I tried to signal the problem to him with allot of pointing. He had no idea what was going on.

I grabbed his arm and dumped all the air from my BCD. I then handed him the dive flag, and dumped the air from his BCD. Now we were both neeling on the bottom. I tried to tighten his weight belt, but it had spun around sideways. I reached around to his back and spun the belt around. Now It was easy to tighten up. I gave him the OK signal, He responded with the OK signal and we were on our way.

I feel like we were both lucky that he just knelt there until I gave him the OK signal. (after the dive he had to ask me what happened).


Did I handle the situation properly? I'm pretty sure he did.


I always check his gear (and he does the same with mine) before I dive. I've never thought to check his weight belt, but I will in the future.



I almost always use ~200 psi less than him, allot of it due to our weight difference. That night I used up the extra 200 psi.
 
mfalco:
Monday night I was with my regular buddy doing a night dive. It was his second night dive, and first in over 20' of water.

About 1/2 way through the dive, in 50' of water, I look at him and saw a problem. His weight belt was extreemly loose. It had to have come unbuckled and rebuckled before it fell off. If he had swam toward the surface, it would have fallen off.

More likely, IMO, it wasn't tight enough to begin with and the compression of his suit at depth loosened it up. This is not an infrequent occurence. For just this reason, I now use a depth compensating buckle, which is available for a modest fee from many shops.

Dave
 
mfalco:
Did I handle the situation properly? I'm pretty sure he did.

You saw a potential problem, and fixed it before anyone got hurt. From where I sit, looks like you handled it properly. More importantly you've added steps to your dive routine to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Well Played.

Ken
 
You handled it right.

Maybe develop a hand signal for that situation for future refrence?
 
That is one reason I love weight integrated BC's.
 
Horizontal is a much easier orientation to deal with a loose belt. It also keeps you off of the bottom. Not so easy with a new diver, though. Especially on that doesn't realize his belt is loose.

You did fine.
 
mfalco:
Monday night I was with my regular buddy doing a night dive. It was his second night dive, and first in over 20' of water.

About 1/2 way through the dive, in 50' of water, I look at him and saw a problem. His weight belt was extreemly loose. It had to have come unbuckled and rebuckled before it fell off. If he had swam toward the surface, it would have fallen off.

I tried to signal the problem to him with allot of pointing. He had no idea what was going on.

I grabbed his arm and dumped all the air from my BCD. I then handed him the dive flag, and dumped the air from his BCD. Now we were both neeling on the bottom. I tried to tighten his weight belt, but it had spun around sideways. I reached around to his back and spun the belt around. Now It was easy to tighten up. I gave him the OK signal, He responded with the OK signal and we were on our way.

I feel like we were both lucky that he just knelt there until I gave him the OK signal. (after the dive he had to ask me what happened).


Did I handle the situation properly? I'm pretty sure he did.


I always check his gear (and he does the same with mine) before I dive. I've never thought to check his weight belt, but I will in the future.



I almost always use ~200 psi less than him, allot of it due to our weight difference. That night I used up the extra 200 psi.


On a side note you still having those stickers made like your avatar?
 
stangscuba98a:
On a side note you still having those stickers made like your avatar?


Eventually, I'm way behind on a ton of thins now. I have to redraw the picture so it look decent blown up.
 
laivindil:
Maybe develop a hand signal for that situation for future refrence?


hopefully it won't happen again.


I am going to check his weight bel in the future before we dive. His BCD is weight integrated, but he only keeps 8-10 lbs in it. That makes it easy for him to switch betwwen salt and fresh water. He just removes the weight from the BCD for fresh water.


Thinking back about the dive, I do remember that he put his BCD on, then realized he forgot his weight belt. He probably didn't get it on tight to begin with, because he didn't remove the BCD to put the weight on. If that is the case I would have definately noticed if I checked his weigh before the dive.
 
mfalco:
Thinking back about the dive, I do remember that he put his BCD on, then realized he forgot his weight belt. He probably didn't get it on tight to begin with, because he didn't remove the BCD to put the weight on. If that is the case I would have definately noticed if I checked his weigh before the dive.

How do you dump the weightbelt in an emergency if you it's underneath the BC?
 

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