Who has had issues with equipment while underwater?

- Tell us your stories ....
ran out of air, Free flow regulator, emergency swimming ascent???

I'd suggest reading the "accidents & incidents" forum for plenty of good learning material.

But to respond directly: I was on a boat dive recently. I geared up, and did my usual gear check. The last thing I do before I get in the water, is check to make sure I have air in my tank, and then I take a breath or two from my reg to make sure it's working properly. I did my backwards roll, gave the boat my "ok" signal, and grabbed my camera from the mate. I swam around the stern, and started working my way down. At about 4 feet, my reg locked up. I switched to my octo/inflator, and it was locked up too. Luckily I was close to the surface, so I swam up (remembering to exhale tiny bubbles) and broke the surface. I signaled to the mate, and told him my reg was locked. I could see the look of confusion on his face as I told him my back-up reg was frozen too. He had just checked my valve, and watched me check my spg, and take breaths off my reg. I got to the back of the boat , and he checked my valve again. It was turned off. The best we can figure, is that while moving around the back of the boat, and down the line, a rope somehow rolled my tank valve back far enough to cut off my gas. I'm just lucky I was so close to the surface.

I've also had buddies with reg or octopus issues leaking gas or free-flowing. 99% of the time it's been fixed by tapping the purge button a time or two (probably cause by sand in the reg). I had a hp hose crack on me, but I caught that during my gear check. It split under the hose protector, so the crack was not visible, but the leak was just loud enough for me to hear. (guess that didn't really happen underwater though) Had a mask completely flood in heavy current on a night dive. That was a big p.i.t.a. but my buddy noticed I was having issues, and stood by while I got the problem fixed.

Gear problems are going to happen. I do my best to learn from them, and hopefully they will make me a better diver in the long run.

Hebron Hill;

You should, most likely, get a fair amount of feedback on this thread.

I've had a few real case dives where buddy breathing or free ascents became necessary.

SCUBA is a very equipment intensive sport. Dive equipment does fail: Regs free flow, HP 1st stage seats fail, Inflators stick/leak, fin straps break, dry suits leak, weight pouches come loose, masks get knocked off and lost, the list goes on and on. I've experienced all this.

A free ascent is not such a big deal. You just need to make the decision before panic sets in.

Dive a lot, take as many courses as you can, find some nice mentors-some online ones are here-
and enjoy diving.

An O-ring on my buddy's reg blew at vortex at the gate as we were coming out, and although his other tank had quite a bit of air, we had a significant amt of deco to do so we shared air on the way out. Couldn't see crap because the ow divers mucked it up very nicely in the cave, and as we were picking up our o2 bottles some fools came swimming in, fluttering, and just kicking the crap out of the floor. Elevated the stress level a little. They took pictures of us and my buddy gave 'em the finger. But anyway the whole thing was no big deal.

Was off right off Pompano Beach diving off my brother in law using borrowed equipment (problem number one) We were max depth 25 feet. The bugs were running and we trapped two by a rock. He had one and I was watching the other waiting until he caught his.... While I was concentration on NOT spooking the Lobster I was watching the regulator fell out of the mouth piece. I did not notice as I was still holding the mouth piece in my mount until I sucked water into my mouth.... I looked down and grabbed my reg and spit out my mouth piece. I signaled my brother in law and looked at me like... WHAT's the PROBLEM??? can't you see I almost have this BUG.... I showed him and took a hit off his reg and surfaced to the boat while sipping air from the small opening (lucky to be 25 feet down) and swapped out the rig with another one in the boat.......As has been said... GEAR Wear out and we NEVER know the date that it will punch out!

I got ridiculously snagged in fishing line on a night dive, mid-tides, while trying to pole some flounder. My arms ended up being pinned to my body and I had limited movement from my legs but I was able to get around the point despite one hellava current, but it limited my fish take to 4. I should have come home with significantly more(also should have surfaced with far more gas, but I'm still breathin).

As a new cavern diver, my primary quit working at Orange Grove Sink. Took me about 10 seconds to realize that my isolator was shut and I had half the gas that my SPG showed(which is better than the 0 gas I was getting from my primary).

When I beach dived like crazy, I used a damned Air 2 and it just couldn't keep up to the abuse of very heavy beach diving in less than ideal conditions. It constantly leaked at various intensities and I became quite decent at ripping it apart underwater and detuning the ever living piss out of it to keep the gas loss to a minimum. I could still breath it, albeit quite a bit wetter, with alot more effort, but thats OK.

I've run out of gas several times on shallow beach dives, knowing full well that I was doing so in order to take a few more fish or stay a little longer. We're talking 15' deep wrecks here. Not at all an emergency.

I've got caught in a lightning storm at the Whiskey which made me hunker to the sand for a good amount of time(away from the wreck). When we surfaced at the beach later, after the storm passed, cops were waiting for us to check if we were OK. Bystanders called them after seeing us go diving and lightning striking our area. Couldn't really feel any of the lightning though.

Got caught in another lightning storm at Morrison Springs, we were in OW above the cavern and lightning was hitting in the immediate vicinity and we were jolted underwater with every strike - quite stressfull.

I've got more... but it comes down to crap just happening... Training and experience go a long way.

Seems like every time I get in the water with Rob something goes wrong. Lights failing all over the place, masks failing. Running out of air. Silt outs.

Wait you mean non training? My wife had a primary failure just down the chimney in JB. Was only an intova, she switched to backup and we turned and played in the cavern. I've had 2 run away inflators, one a slow creep and one went wide open with no warning. 2 different ones as well! Had the mouthpiece fall off a reg once, thats a big surprise! Nothing major though such as a 1st stage failure though.