hektic
Guest
Over spring break I took my AOW with my buddy. We did our dives over 2 weekends at Lake Travis. Prior to this class I had purchased my scuba gear. I thought I was slick for ordering online to save money but boy was I wrong. One of the pieces of gear I ordered was a Aeris Airlink. Its an inflator hose octo. When It got to me it was impossible to breath from, no matter how hard I pulled. So I call up my LDS and ask about getting it serviced since I don't want to fool with sending it back and waiting. Turns out they don't service Aeris but luckily another shop in town does. I picked my airlink up the Friday before the first dives.
We had a class of 4 and one dropped after the first day of diving for medical reasons. So it was 3 of us and the instructor. I was buddies with my buddy and the 3rd guy was with the instructor. We were on the Mansfield damside of the park and we swam out about 15 yards and dropped to about a 25ft bottom that they use for search and recovery training. Water temp was 65 on the surface.
My buddy and I are hanging out on the bottom waiting for our instructor to get done communicating with his buddy so that he can give us the go ahead to start the navigation exercise. After less that a minute on the bottom I felt a jet of cold water rush in my mouth. As a reach for my reg I'm thinking, "I know the reg is still in my mouth, I've got the mouthpiece in my mouth. What the heck could be wrong with it?" When my hand reached my mouth there was no reg, the mouthpiece had fallen off!
I spat out my mouthpiece and grabbed my octo/inflator and started breathing. I reached over and grabbed my mouthpiece and then got my buddy's attention and showed him my 2nd stage with no mouthpiece just to see what his reaction would be. I thought it was humorous. My intentions were to then snap it back together. At that moment I was thinking, "I'll just get a ziptie when I get to shore and fix it before the next dive, for now just keep your hand near your reg and check on it, no biggie."
I was relatively calm throughout the whole deal, but before I got my mouthpiece back on my reg I started to float up. I was reaching for my bc inflator hose to let some air out but forgot that it was also my octo, which was presently in my mouth. In the confusion I drop my mouthpiece and start frantically reaching for where my bc inflator should be. Mind you I'm rising slowly but the loss of control made me panic for an instant, until i remembered that my bc inflator was in my mouth. I take it out, extend the hose up, get the air out and plop on the bottom. I put the inflator/octo in my mouth and start to breath again.
The moment I regain control the instructor swims over, signals us to buddy up and start the exercise. My buddy sees how awkward I was with the inflator/octo so he extended his conventional octo and we went to the surface. When we got there our instructor was super confused until I showed him my reg with no mouthpiece. I got to hang out on the surface while they got some more search and recovery practice. Within a couple minutes they find the mouthpiece and we continue the dive.
I learned so much on this one dive.
1st - Service your gear regularly. You never know whats going to happen, and every piece of it needs to work. When I had my inflator/octo in my mouth I thought, "Man I just picked this thing up two days ago...Im glad I got it done." If I had been lazy and neglected to get my airlink working as an octo before my weekend of diving I could have been in some trouble and also put my buddy at risk.
2nd - Inspect your gear before every dive. I know when I got my reg it had the ziptie on it, but I didn't check it before I got in the lake that day. It was black like the mouthpiece so I guess that's why it didn't stand out to me when I was assembling my gear. If I had not of been so lucky I could have easily aspirated water when the 2nd stage became loose.
3rd - Know your gear. I felt a wave of panic come over me when I reached for my bc inflator and it was not there. If I had practiced more with my gear I would have known to either use the dump valve or to simply take the octo out of my mouth to release some air. If you get new gear practice with it. Especially an inflator/octo.
4th - Buy from your LDS or find out what your LDS services before you buy your gear.
They weren't lying when they said that scuba diving is an equipment intensive sport.
Keep in mind all of this happened at 25 ft so at anytime had I been really panicked I could have done an ESA w/o a problem. I was lucky that it didnt happen the next week when we were at 130ft on the grate of the dam where you cant see any further than your face to computer monitor WITH your dive light. Its silty and nasty, but the grate is nice to use for controlling your depth.
Now, even when I'm just jumping in the pool to screw around (I get bored vacuuming the pool from the deck...if I got air why not?), I check every piece of my gear no matter how casual the diving. Just to get in the habit
Right now I'm doing the Stress and Rescue which will wrap up this weekend. Our instructor asked us if we would be willing to volunteer one day to help test out a Divecon in training. We would be "students" given instructions to freak out so the Divecon can react...maybe I should pull this one on him
Be safe.
We had a class of 4 and one dropped after the first day of diving for medical reasons. So it was 3 of us and the instructor. I was buddies with my buddy and the 3rd guy was with the instructor. We were on the Mansfield damside of the park and we swam out about 15 yards and dropped to about a 25ft bottom that they use for search and recovery training. Water temp was 65 on the surface.
My buddy and I are hanging out on the bottom waiting for our instructor to get done communicating with his buddy so that he can give us the go ahead to start the navigation exercise. After less that a minute on the bottom I felt a jet of cold water rush in my mouth. As a reach for my reg I'm thinking, "I know the reg is still in my mouth, I've got the mouthpiece in my mouth. What the heck could be wrong with it?" When my hand reached my mouth there was no reg, the mouthpiece had fallen off!
I spat out my mouthpiece and grabbed my octo/inflator and started breathing. I reached over and grabbed my mouthpiece and then got my buddy's attention and showed him my 2nd stage with no mouthpiece just to see what his reaction would be. I thought it was humorous. My intentions were to then snap it back together. At that moment I was thinking, "I'll just get a ziptie when I get to shore and fix it before the next dive, for now just keep your hand near your reg and check on it, no biggie."
I was relatively calm throughout the whole deal, but before I got my mouthpiece back on my reg I started to float up. I was reaching for my bc inflator hose to let some air out but forgot that it was also my octo, which was presently in my mouth. In the confusion I drop my mouthpiece and start frantically reaching for where my bc inflator should be. Mind you I'm rising slowly but the loss of control made me panic for an instant, until i remembered that my bc inflator was in my mouth. I take it out, extend the hose up, get the air out and plop on the bottom. I put the inflator/octo in my mouth and start to breath again.
The moment I regain control the instructor swims over, signals us to buddy up and start the exercise. My buddy sees how awkward I was with the inflator/octo so he extended his conventional octo and we went to the surface. When we got there our instructor was super confused until I showed him my reg with no mouthpiece. I got to hang out on the surface while they got some more search and recovery practice. Within a couple minutes they find the mouthpiece and we continue the dive.
I learned so much on this one dive.
1st - Service your gear regularly. You never know whats going to happen, and every piece of it needs to work. When I had my inflator/octo in my mouth I thought, "Man I just picked this thing up two days ago...Im glad I got it done." If I had been lazy and neglected to get my airlink working as an octo before my weekend of diving I could have been in some trouble and also put my buddy at risk.
2nd - Inspect your gear before every dive. I know when I got my reg it had the ziptie on it, but I didn't check it before I got in the lake that day. It was black like the mouthpiece so I guess that's why it didn't stand out to me when I was assembling my gear. If I had not of been so lucky I could have easily aspirated water when the 2nd stage became loose.
3rd - Know your gear. I felt a wave of panic come over me when I reached for my bc inflator and it was not there. If I had practiced more with my gear I would have known to either use the dump valve or to simply take the octo out of my mouth to release some air. If you get new gear practice with it. Especially an inflator/octo.
4th - Buy from your LDS or find out what your LDS services before you buy your gear.
They weren't lying when they said that scuba diving is an equipment intensive sport.
Keep in mind all of this happened at 25 ft so at anytime had I been really panicked I could have done an ESA w/o a problem. I was lucky that it didnt happen the next week when we were at 130ft on the grate of the dam where you cant see any further than your face to computer monitor WITH your dive light. Its silty and nasty, but the grate is nice to use for controlling your depth.
Now, even when I'm just jumping in the pool to screw around (I get bored vacuuming the pool from the deck...if I got air why not?), I check every piece of my gear no matter how casual the diving. Just to get in the habit
Right now I'm doing the Stress and Rescue which will wrap up this weekend. Our instructor asked us if we would be willing to volunteer one day to help test out a Divecon in training. We would be "students" given instructions to freak out so the Divecon can react...maybe I should pull this one on him
Be safe.
