Who has been the provider on a real OOA?

[mempilot]

Nothing on you Mark, but you can breath for quite a while at 10' on 200psi. Was the person panacking or something? I had to do the same thing for a diver on the anchor line last year. I guess some regs don't breath that great with only 200psi.

Hi,

I have donated the long hose one time and it was a low on air dive. The other diver was low enough on air that he was going to limit his safety stop to about 30 seconds so he could make the surface with about 200 PSI in his tank. I volunteered my regulator allowing him to take a nice long 3 minute stop. He was in no immediate danger of running out of air and if I had not donated he would have made the surface safely and was not anywhere near his NDL for that dive. He had been getting good bottom times on earlier dives but was having some trouble with bouyancy on this dive and blew through the air at a rate that for him was out of character. The long hose allowed him to not feel closed in while we shared my tank.

When we got to the surface he expressed surprise at just how easy it was to breathe from my tank with the 7' hose. The long hose allowed me to fill a lift bag without being too close to him. Really made things easy. When we made the surface he was calm and relaxed.

Mark Vlahos

 

[Mark Vlahos]

Nothing on you Mark, but you can breath for quite a while at 10' on 200psi. Was the person panacking or something? I had to do the same thing for a diver on the anchor line last year. I guess some regs don't breath that great with only 200psi.

Hi,

He was not "panicked" he was however stressed. You are right he could have spent time on his tank but by taking my tank he was no longer worried about his available gas supply. It also allowed me the time to deploy a marker so we would not get run over when we did make the surface. The main benifit was to stop a small problem from escalating into a big one.

Together we drained my tank (an aluminum 80) from about 1400 PSI to 900 PSI during the 3 minute stop, during that time he was able to relax and get his breathing back to normal. He had enough air to fill his BC at the surface, keep his regulator in his mouth while swimming up to the boat and while climbing the ladder.

As I know you are aware the safety stop is very different from a decompression obligation so I was not worried about him if he wanted to skip the safety stop, if he had refused my regulator I would have happily ascended to the surface with him. My point, which I do know you understand, is that the long hose just made things easier to deal with because we had the ability to put some distance between us. He admitted that it was alot easier than it would have been on a standard octopus hose.

Mark Vlahos