Freeflow at 140'

[HappyFunBoater]

I'm glad you were safe. You seem to have kept your senses. Excellent.

But as TS&M pointed out, wouldn't swimming to your buddy and using his spare regulator be a LOT safer than ascending? You had no way of knowing whether you had enough air to make it to 30ft. I suppose you were relying on your pony.

I would have stayed with my buddy and have him cycle the tank to try unfreezing the reg.

But glad you were ok.

 

[ianr33]

Got to agree with the doubles comment. If you were wearing doubles (or at least an H/Y) valve then this would have been a minor inconvenience rather than a "near miss"

Another option would have been to go on the pony and turn off your own valve.After a few minutes it would probably thaw and be OK to breathe again. Of course you need to be able to reach your valve to do that.

 

[TheRedHead]

You've had some good advice, but you really have to rehease these scenarios with your buddy, assuming a buddy would be wiling to do so. From your post, I think you have a good instinct for survival, but I'm wondering about your buddy in that he didn't notice your freeflow.

At any rate, good job.

 

[JEScholz]

Bottom temp was 38F

 

[Jason Ooi]

firt dive in that low temp

Bottom temp was 38F

 

[JEScholz]

I thought about switching to my pony and have my buddy shut off my tank to flood the reg again, but figured by the time he understood what I wanted him to do I might be low on air in the pony and I didn't want to be at 140' with a low pony and my main turned off.

My philosophy is to err on the side of caution. I would rather blow off a single dive than try to salvage a dive and regret it later.

 

[JEScholz]

No, I have been diving cold dark & deep (60-100') for years.

 

[Friggincold]

So were your breathing air at 160' or trimix?

 

[lamont]

I thought about switching to my pony and have my buddy shut off my tank to flood the reg again, but figured by the time he understood what I wanted him to do I might be low on air in the pony and I didn't want to be at 140' with a low pony and my main turned off.

My philosophy is to err on the side of caution. I would rather blow off a single dive than try to salvage a dive and regret it later.

this is the precise incident that your pony is supposed to help you with, not using it in this circumstance seems to point to some kind of bug.

 

[JEScholz]

I am in the process of setting up doubles and planning on a NITROX class. Doubles would not have helped me here though unless I had an H rig with redundat regulators. My buddy and I are not real experienced at the 120-160' range, so we were intentionally limiting our bottom time. The second dive of the day was planned for deco. Since this was our first trip to the Barney, we were just planning on overview with more detailed exploration on the second dive.