First of all, I'm glad that you came out of this scary situation OK. This is just the kind of incident that all divers should try to prepare for (mentally and physically) before it ever happens to them. I realize that you are posting this incident in the "Regulators" section, and I do believe that you had an equipment malfunction. The breathing adjustment knob on your Titan reg should turn freely whether it's hooked up to a tank and pressurized...or not. I hope that your LDS repair shop finds the problem and it gets fixed.
We had been at the bottom for around 30 seconds to a minute and everything was going fine when I started having a problem breathing. I couldn't get enough air out of my regulator to the point of eventually pretty much no air.
At this point, I'm curious where your buddy was? You really didn't mention what he/she was doing during the incident. Was he/she oblivious to what was going on? Was the buddy trying to help out? I guess these questions are moot if the DM was your designated buddy.
I did get the Divemaster's attention in time to get his octopus in my my mouth, but things went from bad to worse when as I moved forward to take his octopus, my weight belt slipped off and I lost his octopus with a mouth full of sea water and began to shoot up uncontrolled.
This situation sucks. This is one reason why many divers split up their weight if possible. Thus, when the weight belt is ditched, the diver won't rocket to the surface super-fast. I'm curious how much weight you were wearing on the belt. Since the dive site was in NH, I'm guessing you were wearing a 7mm wetsuit (or thicker) and probably weighted down with 15 - 25 lbs. of lead.
Although I have no hard evidence to back this up, you may have been overweighted. If this was the case, you would have had to add a lot of air into your BCD to remain neutral at depth. Upon losing your weight belt, this would have made you more prone to ascend quickly.
Since this incident occurred at the beginning of the dive, you should have had the weight of your nearly full tank (about 6 lbs.) to help you stay negative...so long as you dumped the air in your BCD. Were you able to dump some or all of the air in your BCD from one of your exhaust valves?
Another learning point is that, due to wetsuit compression at depth, the weight belt may get a little loose at depth. Feel free to do as others do -- tighten up the belt a little during your descent (or once you reach your max depth) to keep this from happening in the future.
He managed to be able to grab me and both of us began to go up however more slowly yet still too fast. I did manage to get my original regulator back into my mouth and got enough air out of it to keep from blowing a lung. Although, I did end up with a pretty good headache for about 24 hours but thankfully that was it. It could have been much worse.
I may be misreading your comment about "blowing a lung," but for the sake of clarification I'll make the following point: Lung overexpansion injury isn't prevented by getting enough air into your lungs. It's prevented by keeping your airway open, so that as you ascend and the air in your lungs expands, the expanded air can come out.
I finished the rest of the course Sunday (had to get back on the horse). I am wondering if anyone knows of a problem with the Aqualung Titan Regulator at greater depths. The dive shop is going to pull this one apart to see if there was anything mechanically wrong but I used it fine @ 20-40 foot depths on Sunday. Did notice on Sunday that the octopus was free flowing at greater depths. I'm looking for answers around more of a confidence thing. Thanks! djmccarthy
This is the first I have ever heard of a Titan reg having an issue at depth. I have used several Titan rental reg setups, and they have always been reliable breathers. I'm certain that your reg was malfunctioning.
I applaud your willingness to finish out the class. Good job. I hope that by looking at this incident and learning from it, you'll become a safer diver in the future.
Have fun and dive safe...
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