heidihart88
Registered
I'd be grateful for any input anyone has on this situation. I'm a recreational diver who likes to dive maybe a few times a year and last spring took a wonderful trip to Palau, Yap and Chuuk. I have about 60 dives altogether, not too many I admit. Living in Seattle I decided it was time to get my dry suit cert and adv open water. This past weekend I did the dry suit dives and I had TWO suit malfunctions.
The first (obviously not my fault) the inflator valve stuck and inflated my suit uncontrollably fast. Even had I been able to disconnect the hose (I couldn't due to the thick gloves I didn't want to wear) it all happened so fast and the force of the air made it nearly impossible to even move my arms enough to grab the hose. After the incident I was given a different dry suit to wear for my second dive.
A little nervous from the first incident I deflated my suit as fully as possible, decended, spent about 5 minutes doing "skills" at about 15-20 feet and then proceeded to look around. I was at about 35 feet and felt fairly "empty" I was barely able to hover two feet off the bottom so I gave a quick burst of air, waited about a minute, then gave another short burst of air, wanted to wait some more and see how things were, so I kept swimming with my buddy about 10 feet, then all of a sudden both my feet went up behind me and I was zipped to the surface, this time I was able to get the hose unhooked but still not until after I surfaced. The whole thing happened so fast. When I reached the surface my suit was again full of air, puffed out like the stay puff marshmellow. I don't believe there was any chance the two tiny burst of air I took could have expanded that much. My instructor told me it could have been a slow leak of air into the suit from a faulty hose.
I really want to figure this out. I am supposed to do my advanced open water dive this weekend in a dry suit, but if that had happened any deeper I don't want to think what could have happened. Does anyone have any information, ideas, anything that would help. If there was something possibly that I did, or could have done to avoid I really need to know. My instructors said that there was nothing I could have done with the first, but they were also looking straight at me when it happened and could tell I hadn't done anything wrong, the second time I was behind the instructor and they couldn't see what I did. Any input would help!
The first (obviously not my fault) the inflator valve stuck and inflated my suit uncontrollably fast. Even had I been able to disconnect the hose (I couldn't due to the thick gloves I didn't want to wear) it all happened so fast and the force of the air made it nearly impossible to even move my arms enough to grab the hose. After the incident I was given a different dry suit to wear for my second dive.
A little nervous from the first incident I deflated my suit as fully as possible, decended, spent about 5 minutes doing "skills" at about 15-20 feet and then proceeded to look around. I was at about 35 feet and felt fairly "empty" I was barely able to hover two feet off the bottom so I gave a quick burst of air, waited about a minute, then gave another short burst of air, wanted to wait some more and see how things were, so I kept swimming with my buddy about 10 feet, then all of a sudden both my feet went up behind me and I was zipped to the surface, this time I was able to get the hose unhooked but still not until after I surfaced. The whole thing happened so fast. When I reached the surface my suit was again full of air, puffed out like the stay puff marshmellow. I don't believe there was any chance the two tiny burst of air I took could have expanded that much. My instructor told me it could have been a slow leak of air into the suit from a faulty hose.
I really want to figure this out. I am supposed to do my advanced open water dive this weekend in a dry suit, but if that had happened any deeper I don't want to think what could have happened. Does anyone have any information, ideas, anything that would help. If there was something possibly that I did, or could have done to avoid I really need to know. My instructors said that there was nothing I could have done with the first, but they were also looking straight at me when it happened and could tell I hadn't done anything wrong, the second time I was behind the instructor and they couldn't see what I did. Any input would help!