Recreational Ascent Rate in the last 15 feet

[eleniel]

No worries, more information is good. Sorry to assume you were a warm water diver.

Usually the leak is in the inflator itself, a leak in the hose would have reg hose bubbling when not attached. If it changed rather than ended, most likely the inflater mechanism on your BC needs to be cleaned and/or the Schrader valve replaced.


Bob

It was in the mechanism - the hoses themselves were technically all fine, the button was just sticking ever so slightly. We took it in and fixed it up after that dive and didn't have any further issues.

 

[dmaziuk]

I think you'd be better off doing a longer SS at 18 than continuing to load at 40'.

I wouldn't stop at 40' myself, but I wouldn't worry about any extra gas loading if I did.
- 40' is not that deep -- remember: on/off-gassing is driven by pressure difference that would be fairly small here, and
- 3 minutes would only really load the fastest tissue compartment, and that one will off-gas right back in 3 minutes of the regular safety stop.
So it really shouldn't add any appreciable loading.

Personally if I were making a "profile-dependent intermediate stop" (not to say the d-word), I'd use half-pressure rather half-depth. Except that from 80' it'd be at ~20' and you might as well just not bother and proceed directly to your 15' SS.