dshorwich
Contributor
I've been in out of air situations twice in 20+ years of diving. Both situations were resolved without incident. I'll write them up separately, as they were rather different events:
The first time was very early in my diving career, dive #22. I was diving with my brother, who was a little more experienced diver than I was at the time, but only a little. Most of our diving to that point had been in DM-led groups, rather than as a buddy team. We were at a warm-water location, diving with a cattle boat operation and using their rental gear. One morning they gave me a reg that must have been poorly maintained, but I was too much the newbie to pick up on the problem.
So imagine my surprise when, just after our initial descent to about 65', my second stage literally fell to pieces, with the top half coming off. I didn't immediately know what had happened, just knew that I'd inhaled some water when I tried to take a breath. I tried purging my second stage, which of course didn't work (ever try purging the ocean?), then tried a couple more times before giving up on it and switching to my octo. For whatever reason, I couldn't get anything from the octo. I may well have put it in my mouth upside down.
At this point I was really wanting to, y'know, breathe, so rather than spend time trying to figure out what the hell was going on with the damn reg, I looked to my brother. The thought of a CESA flashed through my mind, but I was not sanguine about making the attempt from 65'.
To my brother's credit, he was there, ready; he'd seen that I was having some sort of issue, and was waiting to see if I could resolve it, or would need assistance. (I can think of an insta-buddy or two I've had over the years who would've already gone over the side of the ledge and down the wall we were planing to dive.) As I swam the short distance over to him I wasn't panicked, but I was feeling a certain sense of urgency, let us say; so I didn't give him an out-of-air signal, but rather pointed to the octo on his hip, with emphasis.
He handed over it swiftly, I took a welcome breath, we got ourselves settled and neutral, then looked at my second stage and saw that it had fallen apart. He pointed to my octo, asking what the problem was with it; I signaled that I didn't know, but wanted no part of it. So we ascended together, with me on his octo (intercepted along the way by one of the boat's DMs, to whom we showed my reg, then indicated we had the situation under control), got back on the boat, swapped out the reg, returned to the water, and completed the dive.
In the end the incident was a confidence-builder: even though I was a new diver, I'd gotten myself out of a potentially serious situation (with the help of an alert buddy) without incident. (True, technically speaking I wasn't actually out of air - there was plenty of air in my tank, but I couldn't get to it, with one second stage defunct, and the other apparently problematic.) The main lesson I took from this was: don't panic. If I'd panicked, things could've gone south in a hurry. It's not that I'm especially brave, I don't think; I was just too busy working the problem to have time to freak out.
I got myself a reg when I got home from that trip.
The first time was very early in my diving career, dive #22. I was diving with my brother, who was a little more experienced diver than I was at the time, but only a little. Most of our diving to that point had been in DM-led groups, rather than as a buddy team. We were at a warm-water location, diving with a cattle boat operation and using their rental gear. One morning they gave me a reg that must have been poorly maintained, but I was too much the newbie to pick up on the problem.
So imagine my surprise when, just after our initial descent to about 65', my second stage literally fell to pieces, with the top half coming off. I didn't immediately know what had happened, just knew that I'd inhaled some water when I tried to take a breath. I tried purging my second stage, which of course didn't work (ever try purging the ocean?), then tried a couple more times before giving up on it and switching to my octo. For whatever reason, I couldn't get anything from the octo. I may well have put it in my mouth upside down.
At this point I was really wanting to, y'know, breathe, so rather than spend time trying to figure out what the hell was going on with the damn reg, I looked to my brother. The thought of a CESA flashed through my mind, but I was not sanguine about making the attempt from 65'.
To my brother's credit, he was there, ready; he'd seen that I was having some sort of issue, and was waiting to see if I could resolve it, or would need assistance. (I can think of an insta-buddy or two I've had over the years who would've already gone over the side of the ledge and down the wall we were planing to dive.) As I swam the short distance over to him I wasn't panicked, but I was feeling a certain sense of urgency, let us say; so I didn't give him an out-of-air signal, but rather pointed to the octo on his hip, with emphasis.
He handed over it swiftly, I took a welcome breath, we got ourselves settled and neutral, then looked at my second stage and saw that it had fallen apart. He pointed to my octo, asking what the problem was with it; I signaled that I didn't know, but wanted no part of it. So we ascended together, with me on his octo (intercepted along the way by one of the boat's DMs, to whom we showed my reg, then indicated we had the situation under control), got back on the boat, swapped out the reg, returned to the water, and completed the dive.
In the end the incident was a confidence-builder: even though I was a new diver, I'd gotten myself out of a potentially serious situation (with the help of an alert buddy) without incident. (True, technically speaking I wasn't actually out of air - there was plenty of air in my tank, but I couldn't get to it, with one second stage defunct, and the other apparently problematic.) The main lesson I took from this was: don't panic. If I'd panicked, things could've gone south in a hurry. It's not that I'm especially brave, I don't think; I was just too busy working the problem to have time to freak out.
I got myself a reg when I got home from that trip.