Seaduced
Contributor
Well, I had my first "catastrophic" failure Sunday. During my initial descent, at about 25', my o-ring blew. The load "pop" and rush of air left little doubt as to what happened. I took a couple of "test" breaths, to make sure I was still getting air, in case it was my regulator hose and not the o-ring. Checked my pressure gauge, yep, dropping like a rock. I waved 'bye-bye' to my wife/buddy, signaled "I'm OK" and began a CESA. Reaching the surface, I inflated my BC and started a sprint surface swim to the boat. I doffed my gear and the boat crew pulled it out, closed the valve and swapped the tank. They dropped the gear in, I did a quick check, donned the gear and descended to finish a great dive.
During my second descent, I replayed the events and was amazed at my clarity of thought during the CESA. 1) Surface is calm - no problem there. 2) On the surface, get buoyant - try to inflate BC, if the air is gone, manually inflate, maybe ditch weights, plenty of people around to recover them (yea, I was worried about losing them). 3) Get back to the boat - I surfaced 25' or so from the boat, a short swim. I considered turning off the air myself, after surfacing, but I was so close to the boat the crew was able to do it faster.
I believe this was a "non-event" because, I've been snorkeling since I was a wee lad, I took Stress and Rescue a while back, this was dive number 122 and especially, because I read in SB about someone else have this malfunction and their actions. The 'pop' and rush of air was exactly what was described.
I want to thank those that post their incidents and make the following analysis. It gave me a sense of Been-There-Done-That, that resulted in a calm, thoughtful response. Thank you, Darell.
During my second descent, I replayed the events and was amazed at my clarity of thought during the CESA. 1) Surface is calm - no problem there. 2) On the surface, get buoyant - try to inflate BC, if the air is gone, manually inflate, maybe ditch weights, plenty of people around to recover them (yea, I was worried about losing them). 3) Get back to the boat - I surfaced 25' or so from the boat, a short swim. I considered turning off the air myself, after surfacing, but I was so close to the boat the crew was able to do it faster.
I believe this was a "non-event" because, I've been snorkeling since I was a wee lad, I took Stress and Rescue a while back, this was dive number 122 and especially, because I read in SB about someone else have this malfunction and their actions. The 'pop' and rush of air was exactly what was described.
I want to thank those that post their incidents and make the following analysis. It gave me a sense of Been-There-Done-That, that resulted in a calm, thoughtful response. Thank you, Darell.