Fist time diving Catalina, Island... First time on a liveaboard.....
I was on my 15th dive with my buddy, 2nd of the trip. My buddy, who is an OW instructor in a dry suite, where I'm in a wet suite.
We dropped down by a buoy to ~65 feet. We got to the bottom and all okay. Very soon after this my mask started flooding. I purged and it was fine for ~30sec and I had to purge again over and over. (Looking back, this was an issue that led me to run out of air sooner than expected.)
At one point of the dive I turned my venturi valve as it was getting hard to breath... The next thing I realize that its really hard to pull air, so I crank the valve the other way thinking I turned it the wrong way.... same effect. (I have a legend lux supreme)
Not knowing what was going on, and not being able to pull air... I turn around to my buddy, give him the out-of-air handle signal.. he looks at me funny like.. really?? I give him the signal again but with more severity. He hands me his reg, he goes to his safe 2nd. He gives okay, I give okay back. He gives okay to go up, I give okay to go up... We start to ascend and eventually make it to the surface.
Some points to think about.
I was on my 15th dive with my buddy, 2nd of the trip. My buddy, who is an OW instructor in a dry suite, where I'm in a wet suite.
We dropped down by a buoy to ~65 feet. We got to the bottom and all okay. Very soon after this my mask started flooding. I purged and it was fine for ~30sec and I had to purge again over and over. (Looking back, this was an issue that led me to run out of air sooner than expected.)
At one point of the dive I turned my venturi valve as it was getting hard to breath... The next thing I realize that its really hard to pull air, so I crank the valve the other way thinking I turned it the wrong way.... same effect. (I have a legend lux supreme)
Not knowing what was going on, and not being able to pull air... I turn around to my buddy, give him the out-of-air handle signal.. he looks at me funny like.. really?? I give him the signal again but with more severity. He hands me his reg, he goes to his safe 2nd. He gives okay, I give okay back. He gives okay to go up, I give okay to go up... We start to ascend and eventually make it to the surface.
Some points to think about.
- We surfaced to quick! We did not do a safety stop, and we understand why after talking about it. Its hard to practice out of air scenario in a pool that's only 10 feet. We should have done a safety stop, but this was not practiced in deeper water, so not being able to communicate to buddy that we are stopping at 15 feet, and purging air from bcd etc...
- I should have paid closer attention to my air vs all the cool stuff I was seeing. (later dives I paid more attention to my dive computer).
- I had a HP steel 120 (filled to ~2600psi)
- We were at depth longer than anticipated... 70-60 feet most of the dive until I ran out of air.
- My buddy and I stayed close to each other even though we had 50+ feet of visibility. ~5 feet or so.
- We were both calm, which helped get through the issue.
- My mask needed to be purged as it was leaking bad. After this dive, I used a backup mask never to use this original mask again.
- I had a headache, and so did my buddy about an hour after we surfaced. We were both advised to go lay down. We both took a ~2 hour nap and felt good afterwards.