DennisW
Contributor
From a post in 2006. I've described this incident several times.
Several years ago, while on a float dive off West Palm, I was very rudely liberated from my primary reg. The guy that took it was OOA and wasn't even from our boat, much less from our group. I use an Air 2 set up, so I grabbed my Air 2, then grabbed the other diver's BC to control the situation. This guy's eyes were the size of the lenses in his mask. It took a little while before I could get him calmed down and able to recognize that I was a human asking for an OK sign. When he finally gave me an OK, we made a controlled ascent and surfaced next to the flag. I put him on our boat and told them to go find his boat. Then I finished my dive.
If someone is OOA, they will take your primary before you know they are even there. Test your secondary on every dive to make sure it works and you can easily reach it when you have to.
Several years ago, while on a float dive off West Palm, I was very rudely liberated from my primary reg. The guy that took it was OOA and wasn't even from our boat, much less from our group. I use an Air 2 set up, so I grabbed my Air 2, then grabbed the other diver's BC to control the situation. This guy's eyes were the size of the lenses in his mask. It took a little while before I could get him calmed down and able to recognize that I was a human asking for an OK sign. When he finally gave me an OK, we made a controlled ascent and surfaced next to the flag. I put him on our boat and told them to go find his boat. Then I finished my dive.
If someone is OOA, they will take your primary before you know they are even there. Test your secondary on every dive to make sure it works and you can easily reach it when you have to.