Regs need servicing...

[SeaJay]

Charlie99 once bubbled...
Raven, SeaJay, Aquarium diver ---- get a room!

Or at least take your flamewar over to rec.scuba where it will just blend in with the rest.

Hm.

You're right, Charlie. Sorry... You and I were posting at the same time.

That'll be my last post to this supposed "aquariumdiver."

Jeez... I hijacked my own thread. ;-0

Today's the day I break down that R380...

 

[Lead_carrier]

SeaJay once bubbled...


Hm.

You're right, Charlie. Sorry... You and I were posting at the same time.

That'll be my last post to this supposed "aquariumdiver."

Jeez... I hijacked my own thread. ;-0

Today's the day I break down that R380...

DARN, and I was just getting ready to buy tickets for next weekends round.:bonk:

 

[Divewolf]

I am Jason.

I am not Aquariumdiver.

I am not happy about making this post. You can see that I do not post often. I am more interested in pulling good information out of this board then adding to the bs that occasionally finds it way onto the board.

I received an email yesterday informing me that I needed to take a look at this thread. When I did of course I was not happy and I waited to cool down to reply. There is plenty of half truths, slander, and bold faced lies by all parties involved. I refuse to stoop to the degenerative level that this discussion has taken.

I will probably be flamed....Fine! This is the only post I will make to this discussion. I will not reply to any further posts on this thread. If you have questions you can message me. If I find them pertinent I will reply. I will not discuss shop business on this forum. I am here only to tell the facts regarding that which I feel affects me directly and professionally.

First I have run out of air one time during my diving career. This was in 1995 long before I knew Seajay. I will not bore you with the details but suffice it to say that I learned from the stupid mistake I made.

Below is my profile for the "rescue" that has been referred to on this board and in this discussion. I will tell you what happened step by step on this dive. It occurred at Forty-Fathoms Grotto 01/11/03. Visibility that day was only about 10 feet.

As you can see the computer started the dive with a warning.....I was not using a full tank. The plan was to take a group of divers to the motorcycle suspended at 45ft. From there we would follow the line back to the cavern wall and view the entrance to the cave with the stop sign in place. We would then return to the platform and ascend.

Upon reaching the motorcycle I was counting heads when I spotted a light descending into the depths. I had to make a quick choice I saw only three.
1. Go after the diver.
2. Let the diver go.
3. Send another diver after her.

I turned to the divemaster candidate (the next most experienced diver there) and could see that he did not see the descending diver. I motioned for him to stay there with the group and descended after the falling diver. The diver had come off the line. Why? I don't know. Maybe she was adjusting some gear. Maybe she thought she saw something. She later told me that she thought she was neutral and staying even with the line in the limited vis she didn't realize she was actually negative and falling. As I was descending and you can see I was going down very rapidly I was thinking about 2 things, catching the diver and at what depth would I quit chasing her? As it got deeper and darker around her did she realize what had happened? Again I don't know Maybe she didn't. Maybe she narced. Maybe she did and couldn't stop. In any case by 130 feet she apparently had figured out what had happened and grabbed a tree branch at that depth. Where I caught up to her. I signaled ok and got a return. I added a small amount of air to her bcd to help keep her from falling further and signaled for an ascent. I don't think she saw the signal as I got no reply so I grabbed her shoulder strap and gave a small tug. She got the idea and we headed for the surface. As you can see the ascent last for more then 2 minutes. Fast? Yes. Faster then the computer liked? Maybe but well within table limits of 60 feet per minute. We did not make a safety stop. Honestly it never crossed my mind I was to busy dealing with relief that I had gotten to her before she had fallen further, too concerned with what the other 7 divers had done, and too happy to be getting back to the surface. Should there have been a safety stop? Absolutely! As you can see the computer never set off any warning. This is not an excuse just an observation and a point for not relying too much on your computer. I told the diver to stay on the surface and to get out. I then headed back for the rest of my divers who where still at 45 ft. I knew I would probably go into deco and that air would be short but I knew what to do about it and I trusted my computer to handle the deco. I am sure that some of you will point out the problems with this decision and all I can say is that the dive was completed nobody got bent and I'm still here to talk about it. I reached the rest of the group and completed their dive. As predicted on the return I went into deco. I was short on air and not exactly sure how long I would need to be down. I started checking the other divers for air supply. Seajay had the most left in his tank. He had a good amount of dive experience. He was diving a rig that was relatively new to him and sharing air might be good practice for him. Also if the other divers saw me sharing air it might give them the idea to set up and bring down another rig in case I needed it. I asked for air. He looked at me like I was an idiot. I almost gave up on the idea and headed for the emergency regs that Forty-Fathoms keeps in the water just in case I needed them. But I asked on more time and Seajay gave me air. Thanks Seajay. As you can see at the end of the dive I still had more then 600 pounds. I was not out of air. I sent the other divers up Seajay and I finished my deco and called it a day.

Seajay is a good diver. I am proud and privileged to be able to say that I was the instructor who first introduced him to the underwater world. Not many divers continue their education and learning of diving the way Seajay has. I hope he continues on his quest for the ultimate diving philosophy. We dive differently and I accept that. I hold no grudges or make no judgments on anybody's diving style. Seajay is welcome in the shop I manage or at my home anytime.

I hope this will end this silliness on this thread.

 

[Lead_carrier]

DiveWolf, I'm sending a pm about your profile.

 

[ScoobieDooo]

Sea Jay,
Get yourself a copy of Vance Harlow's books from Airspeed Press, buy yourself an IP Guage, some O-ring picks, some Christo-Lube, ask around on the message board for service kits and parts diagrams. They are available - you just need to find the 'contacts.'

As a friend once told me - "If you can install a kitchen faucet - you can service your own regs."

Apeks are easy to do. I don't even need an inline adjuster to set 2nd stage cracking pressures!

I trust my own workmanship vs. someone I never met.

PS I have found several used copies of Harlow's books from diving friends and bought them for less than 50% of their retail price - just to turn around and eBay them for a profit.

 

[SeaJay]

Will do.

I promised myself that I'd break into that R380 yesterday... But got busy doing other things.

I'll get into it soon... I have a dive on Saturday!

 

[Genesis]

As a suunto user for ~100 dives now, here are my comments.

First, you went in the water with an attention symbol lit. You got that attention symbol on a previous dive the same day, as part of the same sequence, and it was PROBABLY due to ascent violations or "bounces" that caused the computer to be unhappy with you already - you had a dangerously high microbubble load at the time you got wet.

That symbol does NOT mean you have a not-full tank. It means you were on a repetitive dive and had a high microbubble level.

This makes what you did even MORE stupid down the road.

You made a VERY fast ascent from 130. Under 2 minutes, in fact, to the surface. You then immediately came back down and did an ascent, BUT you violated the ascent rate on the computer several times during that process!

I show NO place where the computer put you into mandatory deco, but its very tough to see given the extremely small size of the image you posted.

Care to post a link to the actual SDL file for the entire repetitive series?

What I see here is a real example of bad form if indeed you are an instructor. The emergency might have made the ascent appropriate, but the lack of control on the subsequent ascent when you came back down is another matter, re-decending to depth when the computer did not show a blown deco or mandatory stop is of questionable judgment in the first place, and, by the way, you had 11 minutes of air time BEFORE the computer invaded the ~500 psi reserve when you surfaced - there was no reason on God's Green Earth to take SeaJay's Octo. - you don't get credit for the air you bring back in the tank!

I see several "not good judgement calls" here, and if you want to hold out a shingle as a professional instructor, you're making all of it fair game for commentary. There's mine, given the awfully-hard-to-see data you've given me to work with.

The entire runtime was 16 minutes.

The profile does not back up your words.

Please post the SDL for the entire repetitive series or at least a higher-res picture so I can see if there's a missed mandatory stop symbol in that spike to the surface.

Thanks.

 

[MikeFerrara]

I'll keep my comments short cuz I can't read the profile at all. I also don't know if this was a class or just a dive with folks from the shop. The best cure is always prevention so if it was a class whether or not the student possesed the requisit skills is always a question worth asking.

As far as the profile, as an instructor I've dived lots of lousy profiles in the interest of helping people. Fast ascents? by the dozens. Bounce dives? You bet. Get one person who is having trouble to the surface or halt their uncontrolled ascent and get back down to watch the rest. When handling a distressed diver it can be rough to control the ascent when they're not helping.

Why do you folks think I'm so picky about training. When divers are prepared for what they're doing I get to skip all the monkey business, relax and have fun like every one else.

No doubt that poor diver skills lead to poor instructor skills because some of those folks become instructors but I've seen worse profiles than this from every one who's ever brought a printout from their new computer in to show it off. Sometimes it's a rapid ascent from 80 ft to the surface just to see where they were at. LOL. And back down they go.

As far as sharing air when he didn't need to...best to do it before it's an emergency if you think you might need it later as long as it posses no additional risk. I will add this though, regardless of the urgency of the need, I'll bet that in a DIRF they don't teach that a request for air should be met with conversation or hesitation. UW, breathing gas solves almost any problem and prevents bunches of others. If some one looks like they need gas, give em gas and avoid the sheet storm that might come if they don't get it.

I've done some diving in 40 fathom (I've been a guid for a few years now) and it isn't a place for those who don't have their buoyancy control down. The shallowest place where there's a bottom is a around 100 ft (if I remember) and that's at the top of the cone. It goes down from there to a max of about 240 (hence the name).

 

[Genesis]

The original ascent may well have been justified - even at the rate it was performed.

However, with the errant diver on the SURFACE, the OTHER ascent alarms are more problematic. They show, from my point of view at least, an "instructor" who doesn't have his own, unencumbered ascent rates under control!

Yeah, he stopped at or near the target depths. But he got there at Warp 9, which is unnecessary at best and dangerous at worst, and further, he went into the water after (probably) doing the same thing on the prior dive (which is almost certainly why the attention symbol was lit on entry.)

 

[MikeFerrara]

Are those little dots ascent alarms?