lamont
Contributor
Minor incident happened to me on Saturday that might be useful to share...
Halfway through a dive, I reached back grabbed my dump valve, went head down a little, pulled, and came away with my rear dump valve in my hand.
First thought was to signal buddy. Next thought was to check depth and time, which was 30 mins at 50 feet on a dive which had a max depth of around 90 feet. Next thought was to figure out how this would affect the rest of the dive. Worst case I'd need gas to be able to walk up the dive ladder onto the boat with my reg in my mouth -- diving double 130s gas was not an issue.
So, it was an okay time to try to fix this issue. I hung my light over my neck temporarily, got my double ender out and clipped my HID off to my right d-ring to get my hands free. By this time my buddy had his wetnotes out and we had communicated what the problem was. I gave him the dump valve and he tried to put it on. Lesson #1: don't try to wrestle stuff like this while neutral. I wound up inverted, breathing wet through my reg and apparently failing around enough that I kicked his reg out. At that point I flashed the 'hold' sign and we stopped before we got too much farther into CF-land. Trying a different approach, I dumped all the gas out of my wing and got myself stabilized onto the bottom where he could get some leverage to screw the dump valve back in without turning me over. That got it fixed pretty quick.
After the dump valve was seated, I put some air back in the wing and got neutral, then shifted the air back to the dump valve and made certain that it felt screwed in, that it felt like it held air under pressure, and that the dump valve correctly operated. I still stayed off the dump valve the rest of the dive and used the inflator hose to dump, and also kept the reg in my mouth on the surface and going up the dive ladder since I didn't trust the valve and therefore didn't trust my buoyancy. Back on the boat, inspection showed that everything was fine and I was just being paranoid.
What had happened was that my normal motion to find the string on the dump valve is a CCW loop with my index finger. Over the course of 40-50 dives that had managed to finally losen the dump valve until it came off. I hadn't felt it losening when I was dumping because the smurf gloves don't give me that much tactile feedback.
Back on the boat everyone chatted a bit about it. Checking the dump valve as part of a pre-dive check, or regular equipment check is probably a good idea. Trying to retrain myself to use a CW motion to find the string instead of CCW may help as well. I also didn't realize that one of the good points about having equipment by the same manufacturer is that the dump valve on the semi-closed bags that we carry are interchangable with the wing dump valve. It was also pointed out (something which I had thought about while this happened) that even without a dump valve you can still trap a lot of gas on the other side and the top of the wing, plus I've got a drysuit as a backup. We also went over how the response would have been different if this hadn't been a recreational dive, but a technical decompression dive, and the thought seemed to be that lack of a dump valve wouldn't affect deco, deco took precidence over the dump valve, that there wouldn't be time at most of the deeper stops, and that it really didn't need to be fixed until the surface so probably shouldn't be -- the dump valve could have been stuck in pockets or wetnotes or just ditched and the problem addressed on the surface.
After having had an LP inflator hose bubble prior to that dive and need to be replaced, losing the dump valve, feeling a little light after having changed my insulation around, and (most importantly) noticing that I was building up a lot of frustration instead of just rolling with the problems, I decided it was not my day so didn't dive the second dive.
Halfway through a dive, I reached back grabbed my dump valve, went head down a little, pulled, and came away with my rear dump valve in my hand.
First thought was to signal buddy. Next thought was to check depth and time, which was 30 mins at 50 feet on a dive which had a max depth of around 90 feet. Next thought was to figure out how this would affect the rest of the dive. Worst case I'd need gas to be able to walk up the dive ladder onto the boat with my reg in my mouth -- diving double 130s gas was not an issue.
So, it was an okay time to try to fix this issue. I hung my light over my neck temporarily, got my double ender out and clipped my HID off to my right d-ring to get my hands free. By this time my buddy had his wetnotes out and we had communicated what the problem was. I gave him the dump valve and he tried to put it on. Lesson #1: don't try to wrestle stuff like this while neutral. I wound up inverted, breathing wet through my reg and apparently failing around enough that I kicked his reg out. At that point I flashed the 'hold' sign and we stopped before we got too much farther into CF-land. Trying a different approach, I dumped all the gas out of my wing and got myself stabilized onto the bottom where he could get some leverage to screw the dump valve back in without turning me over. That got it fixed pretty quick.
After the dump valve was seated, I put some air back in the wing and got neutral, then shifted the air back to the dump valve and made certain that it felt screwed in, that it felt like it held air under pressure, and that the dump valve correctly operated. I still stayed off the dump valve the rest of the dive and used the inflator hose to dump, and also kept the reg in my mouth on the surface and going up the dive ladder since I didn't trust the valve and therefore didn't trust my buoyancy. Back on the boat, inspection showed that everything was fine and I was just being paranoid.
What had happened was that my normal motion to find the string on the dump valve is a CCW loop with my index finger. Over the course of 40-50 dives that had managed to finally losen the dump valve until it came off. I hadn't felt it losening when I was dumping because the smurf gloves don't give me that much tactile feedback.
Back on the boat everyone chatted a bit about it. Checking the dump valve as part of a pre-dive check, or regular equipment check is probably a good idea. Trying to retrain myself to use a CW motion to find the string instead of CCW may help as well. I also didn't realize that one of the good points about having equipment by the same manufacturer is that the dump valve on the semi-closed bags that we carry are interchangable with the wing dump valve. It was also pointed out (something which I had thought about while this happened) that even without a dump valve you can still trap a lot of gas on the other side and the top of the wing, plus I've got a drysuit as a backup. We also went over how the response would have been different if this hadn't been a recreational dive, but a technical decompression dive, and the thought seemed to be that lack of a dump valve wouldn't affect deco, deco took precidence over the dump valve, that there wouldn't be time at most of the deeper stops, and that it really didn't need to be fixed until the surface so probably shouldn't be -- the dump valve could have been stuck in pockets or wetnotes or just ditched and the problem addressed on the surface.
After having had an LP inflator hose bubble prior to that dive and need to be replaced, losing the dump valve, feeling a little light after having changed my insulation around, and (most importantly) noticing that I was building up a lot of frustration instead of just rolling with the problems, I decided it was not my day so didn't dive the second dive.
!
