Lost weight belt, thanks SB

[johnsona1503]

My wife and I are new divers (10 dives). We just got back from our first ocean dive in Mexico. First dive of our second day we are at 60 ft. near end of dive air check 1,200 for me and 1,000 for her, let DM know. A couple of minutes later DM signals to surface. Wife goes to check air and drops weight belt starts uncontrolled ascent. We are not use to weight belts and when we checked out equipment I noticed how easy it would be to trip the buckle, the plastic one and was thinking about it the whole dive, especially after ready about it on this forum. Let me stay that again "only because I read about it on this forum. I always wanted to be within a couple of kicks of her during ascent but just had a feeling about this time and made sure I was an arms length away. She is usually over weighted and has air in her BCD at the end of dives. Thanks to this board I knew what to do. I made sure in the equipment check to be familar with hers and my bottom dump, so when the time came I could calmly hold her with one arm a reach back to her rear dump and let the air out. I could then easily hold her, we did the 15 ft 3 min stop and then were ready for the next dive after SI. The metal buckles are not as easy to trip. The gauges don't snap onto your BCD, so we wer told put them between the snap buckle and the velcro cumberbun. That puts it just above the wieght belt buckle and the 10 inches of excess strap. Its really easy to grab the end of the strap and open it up if you are not very carefull when checking air and depth.

Thanks again Scuba Board. It should be manditory reading for all new divers at least the accidents and incidents.

 

[TSandM]

What a great story! Glad you handled everything so well. I agree with you about plastic buckles. The only time I've ever lost a belt was using one; no problems whatsoever since switching to good quality metal ones.

I also agree that the A&I and Near Misses forums ought to be read by everybody. I learned SO much by doing so when I found ScubaBoard!

 

[Seaduced]

Good heads up diving! You spotted a potential problem and were mentally prepared for the situation.

I agree with reading these threads, it really can help the unexpected, not be so.

Darell

 

[Teamcasa]

Great story and thanks for sharing it.

Here's mine.
While diving Catalina's Casino Dive Park I was filming some morays when I felt someone gripping my BC. It was my wife, she had lost a weight pocket (the mean ol' kelp monster grabbed it). She had immediately dumped her air, grabbed me and showed me her empty weight holder. I held her BC securely, regained neutral buoyancy for both of us and was going to look for her missing weight when the third member of our team showed up with weight pocket in hand. (Thanks Mike.)

But the bottom line is, she knew exactly how to handle a lost weight and as a team we all worked together. Practice - practice and more practice.

 

[NJ to FLA]

Wow, good job! Thanks for sharing. Glad that SB helped you

 

[InTheDrink]

Hey Johnsona - great news that SB served you well in this instance. I have learned loads on this board and it's a great educational tool with many great divers with great nuggets to share. Well done for being so on the ball as well!

 

[openmindOW]

Thank you for your post, Johnson A. You did a super job.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

This is how dive buddies are supposed to interact! Good going!

 

[RonFrank]

Good Job. Glad she was not diving with much weight. Generally keeping a diver down can be difficult or impossible near the surface, unless one is over-weighted by the amount of weight the second diver lost.

My buddy lost a pouch on our first dive in Catalina. It was only 10lbs of weight, but that is plenty. We could not find it in the Kelp, and he did the best he could to keep hold of kelp, and do a SS around 20'. However once he hit about 15 feet, it was an elevator ride to the surface. I stayed at 15 feet, and made sure he looked OK at the surface.

The good news is that he was able to replace his junk velcro inserts with quality snap in inserts. I think he was glad to pay the $40 or so to do that. The bad news was it took him a few dives to get trimmed out sans his insert, and that was the first day/dive of the trip.

 

[TSandM]

My weight belt loss was as I surfaced, but I had another dive where I had a soft weight come out of one of the pockets of my XS Scuba weight belt. A loss of 5 lbs early in the dive and at depth is unnoticeable, but late in the dive and in the shallows, I was pathetically grateful for the adhesive capabilities of kelp hold-fasts