bj139
Contributor
I want some opinions on my experiance this past weekend. I was diving with a buddy at a quarry who I picked up on my local single diver wants to dive this weekend forum. When we met we introduced ourselves, explained our diving skills, checked out each others gear, ect. Now this was my 9th dive and his 13th so by far both of us still brandy new divers and we were aware of this. We said we would do a surface swim out to a marker and decend down the line, swim around and check out some sunken items and stay at or above 60 feet. Seemed like a good game plan. We geared up, did our buddy check and off to the water we went. We surface swam out to save air as I suck down and AL80 in about 25 minutes (yes,yes, crazy I know, I am working on it) and we try to decend and he is not properly weighted. We swim back in and he goes to get more weight. When he comes back we decide time for a new game plan because I am not surface swimming out there again. We decide to drop down the wall and then swin xxx degrees out to the item we would look at. We do this and then as we are swimming out about 5 minutes into the dive I can hear my reg starting to free flow ever so lightly. I tried to slow my breathing and get my buddies attention. Just as I get his attention and thumb the dive my reg goes full free flow. I tried to switch to my octo and that free flows as well. I grabbed my buddies octo and with bubbles all over the place started breathing as we acend to the surface. Sounds great except that neither of us managed our BC as we accended and we were at the surface in no time. Total dive time 6 minutes with computers going berzerk for accent speed.
Now here are a few things I noticed after thinking about this issue ALL night long.
1 - It seems as we both had some panic set in and that was a huge factor in shooting to the surface.
2 - I am thinking we should have gone over a game plan for a free flow / OOA situation
3 - We should have stayed closer and been more aware of each other.
I would like you to pick apart my story and tell me what you think can help make me a better diver. If you must, call me an idiot if you think it will help.
I had my first free flow on Saturday. Temp was 52F. About 5 minutes into dive at 50 ft, my octo starts a slight free flow. I switch to octo to try to stop it. My primary starts a rapid free flow. My buddy and I try banging on reg to no avail. I felt no panic. I looked at my gauge and I still had 3000psi and it was dropping but not fast. I knew I had at least 3 minutes and if I could not get to the surface from 50 ft in three minutes with air I should not be diving. Everyone diving has done a CESA from 20-30 ft and knows what a non event it was so 50 ft would be doable. The ascent was less than 60 ft/min breathing normally from my octo. I asked my buddy to turn off my air since it was still free flowing on the surface swim back.
I borrowed my buddies spare reg for the next 2 dives with no problem. I even tried my pony bottle for the first time and breathed it at 62 ft. Oops, better round that down to 60 ft since I am only OW certified. For the next dive I used a spare Conshelf reg with Apeks secondaries I bought used. It had good IP and cracking pressure in the sink at home. There was no problem on the dive.
My free flowing reg I bought new last fall since I was starting my OW training course and I wanted something reliable. It had previously been on 41F and 43F dives with no freeflow. On the 43F dive, the octo had a slight freeflow before the dive but it stopped on turning the reg down in the water. This was probably the beginning of IP creep. Could this be caused by a lack of lubrication? I think I've read on SB about a problem with new regulators caused by no lubrication on the piston o-ring. My regulator is a diaphragm. I guess I should bring it back to my LDS for service since I do not trust it now. I have rebuilt regulators so I could disassemble and lubricate. I will not dive it until I service it or get it serviced. I am learning to service regulators so I will not be relying on someone else for my safety.
I realized several month ago that as long as I was breathing, other problems were minor and were no cause for panic. If necessary, I could sit on the bottom and decide on the best course of action. In this case, I had air and time, so no real emergency, just a problem which had to be solved within minutes.
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