My wife and I have been diving for 20 yrs and our major equipment is 17-18 yrs old. Regs have been serviced regularly, but the BCDs have not (not that there is much to service).
Last winter (2022), my beloved Seaquest Balance suffered a broken attachment between the inflator hose and the BCD shoulder. The break was in the threaded connecting piece fitted and glued into the BCD. This occurred during our checkout dive on Bonaire. I don't know exactly when, but I noticed small buoyancy issues during the initial, descending third of the dive. I was putting more air in the BCD with depth, but it seemed more than normal. I never noticed (seeing or hearing) excess bubbles. Only when we rose to about 35 ft (max=75-80) did I really realize something was wrong because it became harder to swim upward and when I tried to add more air to my BC, nothing really improved. At that point, realized my inflator hose had pulled away from my shoulder.
I bought a new BCD.
Yesterday (2023), my wife's beloved Seaquest Diva BCD, now a year older than mine was, suffered a similar fate. It also failed during our checkout dive which was initiated under the most adverse wave conditions I (or any of our acquaintances) had seen in 20+ years diving on Bonaire. Huge swells. I was in the water. Wife did a giant stride from the dock, surfaced, checked ability to submerge and seemed fine. But then, she had a good deal of difficulty resurfacing and staying above the surface, having to swim upward constantly.
We are 75 yrs old. That sort of effort is not always easy. I could not see anything wrong, although obviously there was. I could see no air being lost; her regulator was working properly. She began to panic, but did take out and drop her weight pouches, although she still had non-dumpable shoulder weights. I and a friend escorted her back to the dock stairs (vis. was near zero), helped with fin and BCD removal, and got her back on the dock. Somewhere during those few minutes between entry and exit, her inflator hose separated from the shoulder attachment point by breaking, just as mine had, leaving a jagged ring of fractured plastic or nylon visible edging the hole where the hose should have attached.
My wife just bought a new BCD.
1. I realize now that there was an overweighting issue with my wife's rig. That has to change.
2. More important, however, is our level of ignorance about such a situation occurring. I have done a lot of reading about "accidents and incidents" both here on ScubaBoard and elsewhere, but have never seen a description of the BCD/inflator hose connection breakage suffered by our BCDs. That surprises us.
3. We'd like to know exactly what deteriorated to the extent that things broke (I don't mean the physical item, but rather the presumptive chemical change that enabled the breakage.
4. We'd like to know why that deterioration occurred.
5. We'd like to know how frequently the breakage occurs across all BCDs, or whether it is limited to those from a certain manufacturer or BCDs of a certain age or number of dives (mine had 700+ and my wife's had about 650.
6. We store our BCDs at outdoor temperature, but in a closet, on Bonaire. We'd like to know if the storage conditions were detrimental to longevity.
7. Most important, we feel that all divers should be alerted to a possible similar problem with their own long-lived, well-used BCDs so they can plan accordingly.
Please stay safe.
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