Great post and great thread!
It'd be overly dramatic to say that Scubaboard has saved my life multiple times, but threads like this and the helpful tips from you all have definitely kept me out of trouble on several occasions.
Rental gear and inexperienced divers go together. The statistics appear to tell us that the dives after OWD certification and before dive 20 are the most dangerous, with dives after a long period of inactivity also being risky. These are the two profiles of the diver who rents gear. I wonder how much rented gear contributes to accidents.
I'm one of those inexperienced divers renting gear, and in my short time diving I've encountered:
1. A reg mouthpiece missing a ziptie. I don't know how likely it would have fallen off, but thanks to Scubaboard, I noticed this at the time of rental and got a different set.
2. A reg where the exhaust valve was stuck open, so when I inhaled (fortunately, testing while on the boat) I was freely inhaling from the atmosphere instead of the tank.
3. A reg set where on each inhale, the SPG dropped by 1000psi or so.
4. A reg set where on each inhale, the SPG dropped about a hundred PSI. (I dove this one anyway, as I knew we were on a shallow dive. Not sure if that was wise or not.)
5. A tank yoke o-ring that was leaking enough to bleed off about 500 psi in a few minutes on the boat. (Most rental places seem to be perfectly happy with people diving with a steady stream of bubbles from the o-ring -- are they
that expensive and/or are dive ops
that poor? But in this case, it was a lot more air.)
And on my very first dives without an instructor, I also saved my instabuddy from entering with her air off, and helped another diver thread his tank camband (OK, that last one was Dive Training magazine, and not Scuababoard).
If it weren't for threads like this one, I think some of those situations would have been very un-fun for a very new diver.
The decision to dive broken gear is usually made at the dive site under circumstances when the alternative is to thumb the dive after time and money have been invested. Given the psychology and social and economic pressures of the real world, maybe having spares, tools, and knowledge for minor repairs is a safety item.
...
Checking out gear early when repairs can still be made isn't emphasized much in training. Maybe people should assemble and try on everything in your living room or hotel room if there is any doubt. Maybe new divers should be more picky about rental gear. Better to be "that guy" making a scene in the dive shop because the power inflator buttons stick or the XL BCD doesn't fit your 3XL body, than to end up dead.
Amen! I'm generally a get-along-don't-be-that-guy kind of guy, but the level of safety-mindedness here in Scubaboard is a great antidote to normalization of deviance. In cases #2, #3, and #5 above, it was all the old Scubaboard posts echoing in my head that gave me the presence of mind to refuse to dive the gear. I announced my intention to sit out the dive, but fortunately in each case, the DM managed to find an alternative that worked. (Unfortunately, I think in some cases the DM just used the defective equipment, although as noted by others, a more experienced diver can better handle the task loading of defective equipment.)
3) Drysuits.
Reading through accident and near-miss reports, loss of buoyancy control by beginners while drysuit diving would appear common. Switching from a familiar drysuit to an unfamiliar one, insufficient instruction, and poor fit contribute. I think the only reason we don't see more of this is that most inexperienced divers stick to warm water.
Ha, I resemble that remark. I feel quite good in the tropics, but I'm still struggling with my drysuit buoyancy control. I wear 8-10lbs in a 3mm wetsuit, but 32lbs in a drysuit. I hate the extra 22lbs/10kg topside, and in the water, that's translates into a 10l bigger bubble of air I've got to manage.