Real-life Equipment Failures

[Randy43068]

Here's a thought.
Execute a safe dive plan no matter what...
A "pony" isn't a bailout for stupid....

That is one of the EXACT scenarios that scares me into wearing a pony bottle. Lobster diving... you see the bugs under the ledge...You are getting toward the end of your dive and you are down to 1000 psi.

First thing you do is dump air from the BC so you can settle quitely on the sand without moving or kicking up sediment and work the bugs as gently as possible, with half your body under the narrowing ledge. Then you begin to try to tickle the lobster out... You screw up and at the last minute the bug bails to the back of the hole. Using your cat-like (nitrox enhanced) reflexes, you make a might lunge for the bug as it shoots back. You accidentally smash the first stage into the roof of the cave shearing a LP hose off at the base.

You catch the bug and wiggle your way out in zero visibility and try to determine why you can’t breath from your reg. You hear a roaring sound, switch to the octopus and get one breath before your tank is totally empty (remember you only started with 1000 (or less psi) and you are laying on the bottom 80 or 100 feet down with a bag of lobsters clipped to the BC, an empty BC and 12 lbs negative and nothing to breath and no way to inflate the BC..

If you are solo, like many lobster divers, the situation is probably only survivable if you immediately dump the bag of bugs, dump your lead and shoot for the surface. Unless, you have a pony bottle.

With the pony bottle, you turn the main tank off, orally inflate the BC and say a prayer as you gently float toward the surface.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

Here's a thought.
Execute a safe dive plan no matter what...
A "pony" isn't a bailout for stupid....

Damn, I thought I was giving a very realistic description of how lobster diving is done in Florida.

I didn't even get into "stupid"..that's when the tank comes off and is shoved under the reef so you can squeeze further back in the hole and snag a lobster..

BTW, a pony IS a bailout for stupid.... most accidents that require a pony are associated with stupidity or inattentiveness etc.

 

[mk706]

Last year I had an O-ring blow on the SPG spool. Thankfully it blew while gearing up on the pier, and I had spare Viton rings in my save-a-dive kit. Bad news was I still lost ~100-200 psi of trimix in just a few seconds. After kitting up, went to breath off regs and check power inflater. Heard a hiss, spend about a minute trying to figure out where it was coming from. In that time, the O-ring blew. Thankfully it happen on the surface. That gauge had only about eighty dives on it at the time.

 

[Rhone Man]

I didn't even get into "stupid"..that's when the tank comes off and is shoved under the reef so you can squeeze further back in the hole and snag a lobster..

I've never done that (blushes). I am sure I have laso never taken off my tank and squeezed into somewhere holding my breath to get a bug (still blushing). Don't know why it took me so long to discover long hoses.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

Sounds like you blush easily...dumb ass..

 

[Shcubasteve]

more tank problems...
Condemned an XS scuba steel (worthington i think..?) tank the other day for EXTREME pitting and metal loss on the interior of the cylinder.... Heres the story:

guy bought the tank at a garage sale and brought it in with some amount of pressure to be sent out for hydro- I bled it off. last inspection sticker was from 2001, last hydro was from 2000 (I think). Removed the valve and discovered about 2-3 inches of WATER inside the tank!!! it was BAD- chunks of rust flaking off and poop brown rusty water. no apparent damage on the exterior. poured out about a cup of rust chips and called it a day. the scary thing is that this tank was brought in under pressure... Someone must have filled it after water was able to get inside.... scary stuff man

 

[raftingtigger]

"Had an interesting failure the other day while I was out with a student. We were surface swimming out away from shore when I noticed some bubbles escaping from my BCD inflator hose. Lifting the hose up to investigate, the inflator mechanism came completely off the hose, causing my wing to lose all of its air. Tightening up the dump valve on my drysuit, I inflated it and told my student to turn around and head back to shore. Figuring to use this as a teaching moment, I asked her what she'd do if this happened to her and she wasn't wearing a drysuit. What else could she do to return to shore safely?

What would you do?

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Ditch my weight belt. -- Rhone Man"

Thank You! We're all taught in basic scuba to have our weights (or at least some of them) ditchable. Why is that? I suggest you all read "Diving and Subaquatic Medicine 4th Edition" Chapter 46 "Why divers die: facts and figures".

And from the non-healthcare professionals version "Diving Medicine for Divers"

Both books are FREE to download online. The link to the referenced chapter of the 'for Divers' book is this
http://www.divingmedicine.info/divingmedicine/Welcome_files/Ch 34 09.pdf

Sure you can play around with the BC inflator hose, but hand off your weights to your buddy whose BC works first.

There seems a lot of resistance to dropping probably the cheapest piece of equipment. If you're worried about the cost have the ditchable amount sufficient to ensure positive buoyancy from any depth and not much more. Is the >$50 worth your life? If I die diving, please let me be found with my weight belt OFF.

 

[shoredivr]

I've had a Diverite Duo computer screen fade to grey at depth, not a battery issue. Not a real problem as I also had a bottom timer.

Two years ago I had one of the LP port plugs fracture on my first stage as I turned the gas on at the surface. It was not overly tight either. Where it fractured was the flange part around the edge, enough to dislodge the o-ring.

 

[CuNanoTube]

I had my power inflater fail on an ice dive once. I would guess that the very large period of time I had to store my gear outside on the ice was the culprit (first ice dive, didn't know any better). I went in, deflated, got to a comfortable depth, and nothing, the button pressed but nothing happened. I inflated orally and went back up (I was "hovering" under the hole waiting for my buddy) to find he had a triple free-flow (all his second stages had frozen) and we never went. It turns out the ice broke off a little piece of plastic that wedged in the valve.
I would also like to note that the ice dive was a complete failure with only 2 of 10 divers not experiencing an equipment problem. My hypothesis on the matter is that we all had to sit on the hole for at least 30 minutes before going (poor planning) and there was full sun, sublimating some of the ice and depositing it on our regs. Two people with cold water regs (Mk.17/A700 and Mares Abyss) had free flows, and then 4 other people who's gear I could not identify also froze up. I Had my inflater go, and another diver's computer failed. Fun times.

 

[cloudflint]

I had a couple of failures over the winter due to the cold.

Firstly had my 2nd stage freeze up and free flow due to the intake hose being full of fresh water from me dismantling it underwater in the pool a few days earlier. (This is a twin hose in case you are wondering). I was only in about 15 meters so I just turned off my tank then feathered the valve and swam back to shore. This happened twice so I gave up for the day. After this incident i learned to always dry my reg hoses if i flood the intake hose

Secondly had my computer literally freeze while getting kitted up during a dive, the comp worked fine sitting in the car, took it out into the cold and a few minutes later it died. Took it back in to my car and sat it on the vent and it came back to life. I then went on the dive and it died again as soon as i went underwater. In the end I just used my buddies gauges to do the dive which worked fine I just made sure he stayed slightly below me. After this incident I started carrying a backup analogue watch and depth gauge.