sudden uncontrolled ascent!

[Web Monkey]

Puh-leeze

Failure points for a simple mechanical valve that's hand activated?

If you've ever seen what's inside a lot of inflators, you wouldn't trust it to flush your toilet.

In any case, there's no reason to add an extra shutoff valve when the inflator hose already contains one. Pop the hose off and the air stops. Pop it back on again and it's back.

An extra shutoff is as unnecessary here as it is on a tire valve. The last thing people need is an extra valve between the tank and whatever the hose is connected to.

Terry

 

[fnfalman]

You can struggle with popping the hose off and back on to inflator, I'd rather use the inline valve.

 

[graywhale]

The best thing this diver did was go back down to recompress and then decompress properly. Divers have died who have had uncontrolled ascents to the surface and then stayed at the surface.

If you have a similar incident, go back down within 3-5 minutes or less - that's a safe time window before bad things can start happening. Then do a several stops at depth and along one at 20 feet. As this examples shows, going down immediately is better than staying at he surface. I know this is controversial, but the statistics, including this case, show immediate in water recompression is the best course of action in these types of cases. If there is a long surface delay and symptoms start setting in, then that's a different kettle of fish.

 

[AfterDark]

The best thing this diver did was go back down to recompress and then decompress properly. Divers have died who have had uncontrolled ascents to the surface and then stayed at the surface.

If you have a similar incident, go back down within 3-5 minutes or less - that's a safe time window before bad things can start happening. Then do a several stops at depth and along one at 20 feet. As this examples shows, going down immediately is better than staying at he surface. I know this is controversial, but the statistics, including this case, show immediate in water recompression is the best course of action in these types of cases. If there is a long surface delay and symptoms start setting in, then that's a different kettle of fish.

What's controversial about that? If there's chance a diver may get DCS than staying at the surface greatly increases that chance, that I wouldn't think is even open for debate. Getting a diver back down to depth will decrease the size of any bubbles. The guessing comes in when trying to determine how deep for how long? When in fact we are only assuming a chance of DCS. I would think depending on the max depth and bottom time anything above 30ft would be a safe decom depths. Of course in extreme depths 30ft may not be enough to squeeze the bubbles and a chamber and a doctor become critical. If NDL haven't been violated surface breathing of O2 is said to work as a preventive measure.

 

[gbray]

while this post has been extremely entertaining let's not forget the issue at hand. I am still new enough to remember those feelings of helplessness when my buoyancy got away from me and experienced enough to to have dove with at least 30 new divers in the last four months. what I see without exception is buoyancy is the number one issue divers with less than 40 to 50 dives struggle with. In my opinion all agencies promote divers way too fast with out any follow up. I have seen this happen numerous times but never from this depth because I would be very selective in taking someone with this op's experience to the depth she went to(case in point her).In my experience and opinion the entire cause was inexperience compounded by narcosis.

 

[Blackwood]

The best thing this diver did was go back down to recompress and then decompress properly. Divers have died who have had uncontrolled ascents to the surface and then stayed at the surface.

If you have a similar incident, go back down within 3-5 minutes or less - that's a safe time window before bad things can start happening. Then do a several stops at depth and along one at 20 feet. As this examples shows, going down immediately is better than staying at he surface. I know this is controversial, but the statistics, including this case, show immediate in water recompression is the best course of action in these types of cases. If there is a long surface delay and symptoms start setting in, then that's a different kettle of fish.

Wow. .

 

[sabbath999]

while this post has been extremely entertaining let's not forget the issue at hand. I am still new enough to remember those feelings of helplessness when my buoyancy got away from me and experienced enough to to have dove with at least 30 new divers in the last four months. what I see without exception is buoyancy is the number one issue divers with less than 40 to 50 dives struggle with. In my opinion all agencies promote divers way too fast with out any follow up.

Gbray and I were having this same conversation at the dive site on Sunday.

There were several inexperienced divers in the quarry that day... I even "got" to use some of my skills from rescue class as one shot up past me like a rocket. I grabbed the back of his BCD and got real negative real fast and flared... the diver was trying to dump air out of his bcd but instead was hitting the inflator and kind of took a ride up... but it was not that deep and he wasn't holding his breath.

Plain and simple truth of the matter it is common to see divers who do not have the buoyancy skills to be certified. They drop like a rock from the surface in the quarry until the sink out of sight through the cline, then they lay the heavy on the inflator and shoot right back up to roof. I would bet I saw that happen more than 5 times Sunday alone, and the vis was only about 20 feet

Obviously, nobody expects a new diver to have perfect or even good buoyancy... that comes with experience... but I think gbray's exactly right in the fact that it does take 40 or 50 dives to start to become decent at buoyancy... but (my take on it) the simple fact of the matter is a large number of divers never do that many dives in their entire SCUBA career.

From what I have seen watching new divers or low-dive number divers, the courses they took to get their c-cards simply didn't include enough time in the water to get the noobs where they need to be.

 

[Codyjp]

Ok, so since I think a lot of good advice has been dispelled here and the OP didn't get hurt I'm going to be the one to ask.

Did you POP out of the water on the surface like a polaris missile? You always here of this analogy but there isn't any proof that it could actually happen, you might be the one to decide this urban myth for us.

 

[Blackwood]

Did you POP out of the water on the surface like a polaris missile? You always here of this analogy but there isn't any proof that it could actually happen, you might be the one to decide this urban myth for us.

I'm fairly convinced it's impossible.

 

[*dave*]

I'm fairly convinced it's impossible.

It is, trust me.