Out of Air on Descent

[dumpsterDiver]

I pretty much always check people's valves. I turn them and return them to the original position. If I determine that the valve was in the wrong position, I inform the diver and say.. "hey your valve is : "off", "barely open" etc. thenI say: "do you want me to fix it"? then they make the decision... It is important, I have caught valve issues dozens of times... Just yesterday, my teenager had open his pony only a half a turn or something.. not sure why he did it, but i fixed it... That reminds me, I need to give him some more crap about that mistake.

 

[CT-Rich]

Or maybe I'm violating some diver code that wasn't explained in my OW class. Either way I wouldn't hesitate to touch a buddy's gear as park of the pre-dive check, whether I had just met them or was married to them.

Man, I don't think you've ever been married... I would NEVER let my ex touch MY junk... 'cause I would be sucking CO or pure N2.

---------- Post Merged at 09:09 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 08:43 PM ----------

I check four things before I hit the water 1) does my back-up air work? 2) Does my primary air work? 3) Does my BCD power inflator work? 4) do my gauges indicate a working system. If I forget something in my kit-up, these are the last thing I want to leave to chance. I last week I was shooting the bull with some divers coming out and I had my reg in my mouth. When I hit my BCD inflator, nothing happened... Oops forgot to reattach it... of course I was standing in knee deep water when it happened. I would never step off a boat or move into surf without breathing off my reg because I can fix almost any other screw-up as long as I have air. My guess is that the OP and her husband won't make that mistake twice. I do give her props for self-analysis.

 

[LoonDiver]

Does your husband now know how close he came? I was taught primacy: #1 Always have something to breathe.

-He sounds seriously independent topside, but can he reach and open his own valve underwater? Or is he totally dependent where it counts?

At 350+ dives, I'm still nowhere near happy with my ability to manipulate valves. I can save myself, but it is still ugly. Sports, damaged rotator cuffs, age, the arms just don't want to go back there. They must, and will if necessary.

Yep, he knows how close he came. He did try to turn his air on underwater, but that's another story. He had new equipment -- the transmitter(?) for his new air-integrated computer and reached that instead. Another lesson learned. We have spent a lot of time "de-briefing" this dive.

---------- Post Merged at 05:01 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 04:57 PM ----------

Loondiver, thanks for the story. I will make sure I have learned from your experience.

Re the octo: Just train with what you have, no matter the configuration. Know your buddy's, train with it as well. I use a latex hose I bought from NEDS and just bungeed it w/o knots. I can just pull it out of the zip tie if need be. It takes force so accidentally releasing it is a non-issue.

Thanks for having the guts to post this.

M

After this incident, I'm pretty happy with our octo configuration as is. Both of us have our similar gear and setup, so it helps with familiarity. I admit to being nervous about posting this on SB, but I hoped some people would learn from it. I sure did!

---------- Post Merged at 05:08 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 04:57 PM ----------

So going back to the original scenario of a husband and wife buddy team with many dives completed, the husband not wanting his wife to touch his gear before a dive doesn't make much sense to me. Why? Because he is still responsible for checking himself whether she touches anything or not, so it doesn't add any workload. On the other hand, assuming they more or less like each other, touching may have benefits. It is possible that a quick check by the wife...or a quick turn of the valve she is today conditioned to avoid touching, could have prevented or ended this incident.

Of course I don't know either person. Maybe she (the OP, hi OP ) is a practical joker who shouldn't be trusted around valves...I don't get that impression from the post but what do I know? Expecting sabotage from your wife just sounds paranoid to me. Paranoid in a bad way I mean. If your marriage is solid enough to go diving together anyway.

I will continue to respect his request that I not touch his valve. He's not being paranoid, sometimes I get my directions confused...you know righty-tighty, lefty-loosy. It's one reason I prefer to do the air-check by breathing from the regulators and watching the pressure gauge, as several people mentioned. We just need to actually DO that right before we get in the water.

 

[CT-Rich]

nothing teaches like the errors you get to walk away from... I bet your husband is never going in again without breathing of his tank.

---------- Post Merged at 08:33 AM ---------- Previous Post was at 08:18 AM ----------

Although, I would say that this would have been a situation where your husband could have dropped weight to get back to the surface if your efforts to haul him up were to great. you can always dive down and retrieve them afterward. not elegent, but that is why they have a quick release...

 

[davidbaraff]

I always make sure to add some air to my BCD right before stepping off the boat; if my air is off, that at least is going to clue me in.

But whether jumping off a boat, or starting a descent from the surface, I've just never really gotten how this is a big issue: even if my air is off, my weighting is such that with my BCD completely empt, I have to stay very still in the water (i.e. no leg kicking) to do my descent --- i.e. just waiting patiently, I descend very slowly for the first 3-4 feet, and only then pick up any speed on the descent. (Both tropical diving and cold-water diving.) So even if my air was off, it's no worse than jumping into a swimming pool, with no gear. If you're properly weighted, having your air off shouldn't be any bigger deal than if you were swimming with no gear. One hard leg kick up, with fins on, and bang, i'll be out of the water in under two seconds.

Are people (other than really new divers, i.e. less than 10-15 dives) really weighted so that this is a big issue? Even a giant stride, no air in my BCD, i'm going to pop back up to the surface anyway.

The closest I've come to experiencing this failure mode was descending with a snorkel in my mouth instead of the regulator. Sucked water, realized the mistake, and kicked back up. About the same as having my air off, I suppose.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

]I always make sure to add some air to my BCD right before stepping off the boat; if my air is off, that at least is going to clue me in.
[/B].

NO!!!! You can have your tank valve off and fill the BC with air from the regulator after it has been pressurized, just as people can get breaths from a reg with the tank turned off and swim down 30 ft... before realizing: "Houston we have a problem"..

 

[lowviz]

Three full breaths and a puff into the BC **while watching SPG** immediately before splashing...

 

[CT-Rich]

But whether jumping off a boat, or starting a descent from the surface, I've just never really gotten how this is a big issue:

You never know what you're missing until its gone... two feet with empty lungs feels a hell of a lot like twenty when you aren't expecting it.

...So even if my air was off, it's no worse than jumping into a swimming pool, with no gear. If you're properly weighted, having your air off shouldn't be any bigger deal than if you were swimming with no gear.

I am very comfortable in the water, but would never mistake jumping in full with gear and jumping into a pool in my shorts. think about how much resistance all that gear makes when swimming. the types of dives I make with a mask fins and snorkel are impossible dragging a full set of gear. if you are curious, try doing a ten foot surface dive in full gear using just a snorkel. if that works out, try water skiing... I'm kind of an curious how that would work...

They had a bummer experience and got a little panicked recovered, learned something useful. Lesson learned

 

[davidbaraff]

Sorry, I wasn't trying to cast aspersions. I simply meant that, properly weighted, when I do a giant stride, I pop back up to the surface whether or not I try, and I'm under for so short a period of time that I don't really have time to breathe from the regulator, and then I'm back on the surface. In that regard, it's no worse than jumping into a swimming pool with just a bathing suit on -- I'm not trying to equate the two --- certainly, I give things a heck of a lot more thought when doing a giant stride from a boat than when jumping into the pool...


As for the water skiing -- well, I'm pretty sure I can't do a slaloom (i.e. one-ski start) in my equipment. (Heck, I doubt I can do it any longer without my equipment.) I'm reasonably sure I can do a two-ski start in full gear in cold-water gear (it's only about 20-30 extra pounds of weight after all). Without gear, a two-ski start takes less than two seconds to pop out of the water, and with the extra weight, it wouldn't take much more (and your drag is gone).




That said, I doubt, however, I could hold on for more than about twenty seconds before my hands might give up from the strain of that much extra drag though, and I don't even want to think about how painful wiping out might be...


In all seriousness, I think the more dangerous situation is having the air open enough to convince you you have air, when you don't actually have enough at depth, and are a good bit under. *That's scary, to me.* A total lack of air from the get-go at the surface though is going to be pretty obvious. (I know if someone turns my air off, I get about one breath from the air in the line, and even then, I can feel it very quickly. Maybe other setups/regulators are different?) At any rate, I'm simply wondering if most of the incidents involving shut-off air are incidents only because it's a combination of shut-off air and too much weight?

 

[CT-Rich]

Most new divers are over weighted. If you read the threads, a lot of divers shed weight with time. Currently, I dive so I am almost perfectly neutral at four feet at 500 psi (give or take). I don't think much about it any more, except if I change my gear around. The primary issue wasn't the weight it was the panic, had he been clear headed he could have hit the surface with a couple of sharp kicks or, worst case, dumped weight (it was a quarry, not open ocean). Little crises like this are going to teach you more about diving than all the pool drills in the world. This pair is unlikely to be caught off guard by this problem again. And when they have a different problem, they will handle it better.