Lessons Learned

[Peter_C]

Yeah but the crawl out got me all covered with sand while you got out looking all clean

I have been the one covered in sand a couple times. Worse actually, once I had to go through all of our regs and rebuild them after the sand was pounded into all of our gear. That was the day at McAbee where the ocean changed drastically in less than 15 minutes, from ankle slappers to overhead surf.

 

[TSandM]

The last time I was down there, I got rolled in Carmel River Beach sand, and I had to rebuild both my intake outlet valves on my drysuit!

 

[pacificgal]

I was the one whose BCD had an inflator problem, and I did test it before I got in. It was holding air when I got in, and when I leaned back to put on my fins, all the air went out. I inflated it again, the air went out again, I had one hand on my weight belt, ready to drop them and the other on my inflator hose, inflating to keep my head above water.
What I did do wrong was to enter the surf without the reg in my mouth. If I had, I would have been a lot better off, I may have sunk still, but at least I would've been able to breathe.
So, what have I learned? Equipment/buddy checks may not catch everything. Equipment can fail at any time, so no matter what the surf looks like, have your reg in your mouth upon entry, if you don't need it, you can always take it out.